Not long ago, on roughly the 5th anniversary of my writing now just about 100 golf course reviews on my website, I decided to take a step back, reflect on the courses that I’ve reviewed, and generate my ranking of what I thought were the best ones. I had initially intended to make it a top 10, but had about 12 or 13 courses in the top 10. Then I was going to limit myself to 25, but came up with about 40 courses that I wanted to put in the top 25. So I settled on doing a top 40 with a long list of honorable mentions. It took awhile, but I enjoyed reflecting on all of these courses (some of which I hadn’t thought about in awhile) and did a lot of good thinking (much of it on my weekly hikes) about what I thought about the courses’ relative strengths and weaknesses.

I would certainly recommend any course in that top 40 or in the honorable mentions to anyone within 100 miles of those courses. But I’m not qualified to make a list of best courses in the US or certainly the world—I just haven’t seen enough of either.

One list, however, that I am qualified to make—one topic in which I have pretty comprehensive expertise—is the best public courses in Michigan. Although I’ve traveled a lot to play golf in the past 25 (and especially the last 10) years, most of my golf travels have been within my home state. During that time, I’ve tried to see just about everything that seemed really worth seeing. The list of what-to-see has certainly changed. None of the courses that most would now consider to be in the top 5 existed when I started playing in 1997. Several of the courses that were once considered must-sees now either get no attention (The Thoroughbred at Double JJ Ranch, The Gailes at Lakewood Shores), no longer exist in their original forms (Tom Doak’s High Pointe), or exist at all (Doak’s Black Forest at Wilderness Valley).

The landscape of top courses has changed over time. But throughout, I’ve made a gradual effort to see them all. So I’ve decided to make a ranking of what I think are Michigan’s top public golf courses. I’ve decided to make it a list of the top 15 because there are probably 20-25 very good courses and I wanted to have to narrow it down a bit. But I also didn’t want to limit it to 10 because there’s a few outside my top 10 that are worth commenting on, some because they deserve to be much more well known, some that I think have become a bit overrated.



First, there are three other categories worth mentioning: (1) courses that I haven’t seen, (2) noteworthy courses that no longer exist, and (3) honorable mentions for the top 15. I can just list the first category. Of the courses that are often ranked or highly regarded, I haven’t seen Harbor Shores, Hidden River, the Bear at Grand Traverse Resort, or the Quarry nine at Bay Harbor. I have played the Links/Preserve nines at Bay Harbor but since the magazines always rank the Links/Quarry nines, I’m just going to leave this one out of the mix. I will say that if the Quarry nine is as good as the Links, Bay Harbor would make my top 15, probably in the 7-10 range. But people seem to like the Links more than the Quarry, so it may not be as good as that. And honestly, I’m not too interested in seeing the other three. I’d rather see Arthur Hills’ Thoroughbred at the Double JJ Ranch, which was highly ranked in the 90s and 00s and has always looked very pretty in pictures. Apparently the conditions have gone downhill in the past few years there, however.

Two courses that would definitely make my top 15, save for the fact that they no longer exist, are Tom Doak’s High Pointe and Black Forest at Wilderness Valley. Doak was particularly fond of High Pointe, which was his first course. And fortunately for him, he’s gotten the chance to resurrect part of it as a new private course. The new course consists of the old holes 10-15 and 12 new holes. Some of the resurrected holes were great, especially the old long par 4 13th, which had one of the world’s greatest greens. But I preferred the more open front nine to the back and that’s been converted to a hops farm. Although he built far too difficult a set of greens given the challenging terrain, I loved Doak’s Black Forest, which was perhaps the most epic of northern Michigan’s golf cart adventure courses. The par 5 opener was one of the best anywhere and it was just a gorgeous place and an exciting experience. Both courses would probably be in my top 10 with High Pointe probably at no. 10 and Black Forest somewhere between 6 and 9.

As far as honorable mentions, I could probably have 5 or 6, but I’ve limited myself to 3:

Dunmaglas (Charlevoix): This is one of those blasts-from-the past, a course that was very highly ranked in the 90s but has fallen off the radar. And I’ve heard that it’s been in pretty rough shape the past few years, so it may not stand as high in my estimation today.

But like Black Forest, this is epic northern Michigan golf. One of the things that I especially liked about Dunmaglas is that the (unwalkable) routing takes you through different kinds of landscapes, from deep forests to hilly meadows. Some of those more open holes in the middle of the course are among the most beautiful and interesting in the state. There are also a few awful holes and the routing is completely disjointed and ridiculous, but the good was pretty great and enough to put the course, in my estimation, in some lofty company.

Boyne Highlands, Hills Course (Harbor Springs): Like Dunmaglas, this is classic northern Michigan golf cart adventure golf, with a routing that seemingly sprawls over half of Emmet County. Despite that, this is one of the best collections of holes that I’ve seen on an Arthur Hills course. As is usually the case for Hills, the par 5s are an excellent set. And like some of his newer courses, the shaping is well-done. The finishing stretch is poor, however. If it were a bit better, it’d be hard to leave this course out of the top 15.

Shepherd’s Hollow, Holes 1-18 (Clarkston): My pick as the best public course in the Detroit area, Shepherd’s Hollow is another newer Arthur Hills course. It’s 27 holes on a piece of land probably 80% the size of Boyne Highlands, so the holes almost had to be packed close together (although the 3rd nine is certainly a golf cart adventure). But 1-18 at Shepherd’s Hollow have all of the strengths of the newer Hills courses—site-appropriate shaping, well-placed bunkers—without the routing clunks and poor holes that mar most of his others that I’ve seen. As typical for Hills, the par 5s are strong and while there are a few holes that are a bit edgy, I think that all are ultimately sound.



Now for the top 15:

No. 15: Belvedere (Charlevoix). When I first played Belvedere in 2006, I’m not sure it made anyone’s list of the top 100 courses in the state. But this 1923 Willie Watson design has gotten a lot of care in the last 20 years, with the restoration of the greens to their original sizes and a good tree management program. And that got the attention of the social media golf architecture influencers, who’ve portrayed it as great old school course and one of the must-see courses in northern Michigan. The rankings have followed; it’s now in Golf Digest’s top 25 in the state and in the top 100 public course lists of Golfweek (no. 99) and Golf Magazine (no. 40).

While Belvedere was certainly underrated then, I think it’s overrated now. To be sure, the green expansion and tree removal have been big positives. The greens are a fine set, built up with a lot of interesting contours at their margins and short grass run-offs. And there are some fine holes including the long par 3 4th, the par 5 9th, the mid-length par 4 11th, and especially the short par 4 16th. But much of the land on the front nine is flat and uninteresting and I think that outside of the top few holes, the remainder hold less interest than the other courses on my list and even a few of the honorable mentions.

But Belvedere is still a fine course and is an excellent part of a northern Michigan golf trip, more easily walkable and more classical in styling than all of the other big name courses. I don’t mind seeing it receive the accolades that it has.

No. 14: Diamond Springs (Hamilton). Here’s another course which has the social media golf influencers to thank for its now-lofty reputation. 15 years ago, you could barely find a picture of this early 2000s Mike DeVries design. I remember some time around 20 years ago having seen some pictures of the course and found them very intriguing. But I didn’t catch the name of the course and didn’t know whether they were pictures of the Mines in nearby Grand Rapids or from a separate course. I almost wondered if I had dreamed the course up.

Well, now everyone who knows golf courses in Michigan knows this one. And deservedly so; Diamond Springs’ best holes are among the best in the state. Several holes on the back nine border and cross a ravine, which makes for one of the best three hole stretches—the par 3 14th, short par 4 15th, and par 5 16th—in the state. The course is also at the edge of one of the largest forests in southwestern Michigan and is quite pretty, with several large white pines framing the ravine holes. Apart from the greens, Diamond Springs is just one cut of short grass. This one cut is all bluegrass, which runs a bit slow but helps keep maintenance costs low. As a result, Diamond Springs is one of the best deals in the state, just $60 to walk on the weekend.

Like Belvedere, I think that Diamond Springs’ lesser 6 or 8 holes are weaker than the other courses on this list. But it’s still a must-play if you’re in western Michigan and combines well with some of the other courses in the area (several of which we’ll see later on this list) and Grand Rapids’ fine breweries for a low budget, high quality golf trip.

No. 13: Red Hawk (East Tawas). Although it might change if ever play the Links and Quarry nines at Bay Harbor, at least until then, I think that Red Hawk is the best of Arthur Hills’ many Michigan efforts. While highly rated for several years after it opened around 2000, it has, like many of the highly-touted courses that opened around that time, fallen off most people’s radar, which in this case is probably in part due to Red Hawk being on the state’s sunrise side, well-removed from the golfing centers of Traverse Bay, Petoskey, and Gaylord.

Like Boyne Highlands and Shepherd’s Hollow, Red Hawk is the ‘new style’ Arthur Hills, with smooth shaping on and around the greens and bunkers. The shaping blends very well with this site which, save for crossing a river valley on the front nine, is quite moderate. But like Diamond Springs, it’s set in a beautiful forest and has some spectacular trees. It also has a handful of outstanding holes, most notably in the opening stretch. I was especially impressed by the short par 4 2nd and the beautiful, strategic par 5 4th, which winds around several bunkers and plays to a very natural-looking green complex that’s framed by some huge white pines.

Unfortunately every Arthur Hills course either has a routing clunk and/or a few holes that bring the course down and in this case is the former. Red Hawk would be completely walkable save for the fact that Hills apparently got lost in routing the front nine and decided that instead of trying to fix his routing, he’d make us drive 400 yards to get from the 7th to the 8th green. It’s a really unfortunate moment on an otherwise very fine course.

No. 12: Treetops—Signature (Gaylord). Treetops was the big name in 90s-00s northern Michigan resort golf. But I think that they’ve cut back on their advertising budget in recent years and haven’t managed to pique the interest of the social media golf influencers. Because of this, you don’t hear much about Treetops anymore and its courses only occasionally find their way onto best-in-state lists.

As I mentioned in my long-form reviews of several of the Treetops courses, I find the neglect and demotion of Treetops to be unfortunate. I still think it has one of the best collections of courses in the state, at least two of which should still be on lists of the state’s top 25 courses. One of these is the Signature, Rick Smith’s first of three courses at the resort with which he was synonymous as the head pro (but with which he no longer appears to be associated). It’s a proper northern Michigan golf cart adventure that, like Dunmaglas, does an excellent job of taking golfers through a variety of terrain and landscapes. The shaping and bunkering are also very attractive, blending well with the surroundings. And there are a handful of fine holes, especially the long, downhill par 4 3rd and the beautiful, almost heathland-like par 3 4th.

The drawback, like other resort courses in northern Michigan, is that the Signature is unwalkable, with several long green-to-tee cart rides. But part of this is owning to the difficult nature of the site. And the subtlety in the shaping of the bunkers and green complexes, plus the variety of landscapes, elevates it to a level above almost all other courses in this category.

No. 11: Bahle Farms (Suttons Bay). In contrast to the previous few courses, Bahle Farms was on nobody’s radar either then or now. It is, I think, Michigan’s major hidden gem. Maybe part of this is because it’s tucked away in the Leelenau Peninsula, off the beaten path up the west coast or the middle of the state. But I also don’t remember seeing many advertisements for this place. Apparently the Foreplay guys have been here, but not the more architecture-oriented of the golf social media influencers. So Bahle Farms is still awaiting its due.

Three things stand out about Bahle Farms: (1) the land, (2) the shaping in general, (3) the green contours in particular. The land is just about the best of any northern Michigan course; hilly, but at the right scale for interesting golf. And the shaping of the course is second-to-none. Everything blends in so well with its surroundings. Although I was never able to find it in previous Google searches, ChatGPT says (and I was able to corroborate) that it was designed by Gary Pulsipher. I’ve heard this name, but only once or twice, and I didn’t know that he had designed any courses in Michigan. I guess I should seek out his other courses because not only does this course have some of the best shaping of bunkers and green complexes, it has one of the best sets of green contours in the state, some wild and wavy, some seeming to be nothing more than the contours that had been there before the course was built.

There are a few 150 yard green-to-tee walks here and the par 3 9th sits awkwardly by itself in the woods after a long drive from the 8th green. But hole-for-hole, this course stands with most of the bigger names in the state and its naturalistic shaping and inventive green contours would be an asset at almost any of them.

No. 10: Sage Run (Bark River). The Island Resort, an Indian casino near the Wisconsin border in the Upper Peninsula, does some of the best marketing in the state for its two courses, Sweetgrass and Sage Run. They run great package deals that include Timberstone and Greywalls, two of the other top courses in the Upper Peninsula, and they seem to have the in with Golfweek, as each course always does well on its list of the 20 public courses in the state.

While I think Sweetgrass is often overrated (owing in large part, I think, to its immaculate conditioning), Sage Run is undoubtedly an excellent course. It’s quite different from Sweetgrass; that course is over modest terrain and perfectly conditioned from tee-to-green, this one is over very challenging terrain and the conditioning is quite rustic. Actually, I’d describe everything about this design as rustic. But that’s what makes it so interesting. The shaping is minimal, creating a course that blends in wonderfully with its surroundings and makes for some interesting features, like the free form tee boxes that flow into the fairways and par 5 3rd green on a small knoll. The green surfaces are some of the most interesting in the state, laid simply on the land but with some good interior contour. Most of all, the course doesn’t shy away from severe uphill holes, with the 180 yard par 3 5th playing 80 feet uphill (!) and the neighboring short par 4 16th playing over 100 feet uphill.

The conditions are also a bit rustic, with bluegrass fairways and natural sand in the bunkers (and a good amount of rocks). This coupled with the severity of several holes has made it less than popular with resort golfers used to the immaculate conditioning and straightforward design. But I really appreciated architect Paul Albanese’s commitment to keeping everything here very natural while still introducing a lot of strategy with the bunkering and contouring an excellent set of greens. It all makes for one of the most original and interesting courses in the state.

No. 9: Treetops—Premier (Gaylord). In addition to being at the PR-less Treetops, the Premier Course has the second hex of having been designed by Tom Fazio, whose name was a big selling point in the 90s and 00s but has become a dirty word among the architecture influencers in the 2020s. I’ve played a handful of Fazio courses and while they haven’t always been the most interesting, they’re always beautifully done, with the shaping of features always seamlessly tied in with their surroundings. Given the high quality of his workmanship, I don’t understand why Fazio’s courses have fallen so far out of favor.

As it is with Treetops’ Fazio Course. It’s one of the best-looking courses in the state, both in terms of the surroundings and the design elements. It’s also on one of the more interesting pieces of land, consisting of several long valleys the perfect width for golf holes. This makes for a collection of very strong holes including 3 of the 4 par 5s (nos. 2, 12, and 16), the par 4 9th with its unusual ridge top green, and two great, natural looking par 4s nos. 13 and 14. The only odd notes here are the greens on two short par 4s nos. 5 and 15, both of which have oddly sunken back tiers and don’t fit in with the shaping of the greens across the rest of the course.

Along with Bahle Farms, the Premier is the most underrated course in the state. I thought it was underrated in Treetops’ heyday 25 years ago, barely making Golf Digest’s top 25 in the state in its best years. Even with all the great new courses built since then, this course still easily makes that list for me. And honestly, I don’t think it’d be far-fetched to have it as one of the top 100 US public courses. The routing is good, the shaping is great, there are several excellent holes, and only a few questionable ones. That adds up to a lot for me.

No. 8: Stoatin Brae (Augusta). Like Diamond Springs and Sage Run, Stoatin Brae runs on a lower-cost maintenance model, with bluegrass fairways and fewer, more simply shaped bunkers. Yet like those courses, this course—designed by Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design associates—makes a great deal out of this ethos of simplicity. Like those courses, this one has minimalistic shaping and fits the landscape beautifully. And that landscape, sort of a hilltop prairie, is one of the prettiest and most unique that I’ve seen.

While every hole here is at minimum solid, there are a several that stand out as among the best in the state including the mid-length par 4 10th with its great drive over the edge of a hill, the long, reverse camber dogleg left par 4 13th to a great punchbowl green, and the very original uphill par 4 15th to a small green that sits innocuously in a saddle. The par 3s are also an excellent set highlighted by the long, uphill 7th that feels very English in how it encourages you to run the ball onto the green and the shorter 17th, which would fit in well at Prairie Dunes. I also liked the short par 4 8th with its narrow green that punishes shots coming in from the wrong angle. That’s a lot of excellent holes!

In my two visits, there’s been an issue with the conditioning. I first went when the course had just opened and was like playing on an airport runway; you couldn’t stop the ball anywhere. This got a lot of negative comments on Google and when I went again a few years later, it played quite soft, which was inappropriate both for the design and the prairie setting. Perhaps they’ve figured out the maintenance since then. But given that the Gull Lake View resort has positioned this as their high-end course (certainly judging by the prices), I think that bentgrass, rye, or fescue fairways (or a mix of the latter) would have been better. Still, the design shines through.

No. 7: Arcadia Bluffs—South (Bear Lake). Opening a second course at Arcadia Bluffs was a big event because the first course has been the most popular in the state for the last 20 years. But lakefront property is hard to come by, so the site for the new course would have to be a modestly rolling piece of farmland about a mile down the road. Drama on the scale of the original course was clearly not going to happen, so the approach would have to be different here.

Architects Dana Fry and Jason Straka had a brilliant idea: design a course in the CB MacDonald/Seth Raynor style, one that is (1) very much in-vogue with the architecture influencers, (2) a style that the public rarely gets to see, and (3) one that works well on modest land. It consists of numerous steep/deep bunkers laid out to require shotmaking strategy. This is a thinking man’s course and the architects clearly put great thought into designing it. The bunker style also adds a lot of visual interest to an otherwise not-all-that-interesting site and produces some of the most interesting and testing holes in the state including the long par 4s nos. 4 and 9 and a mid-length par 4 13th, with a blind approach to a punchbowl reminiscent of the original course.

While playing most these holes requires more thought that even most of the higher ranked courses on this list, the South Course has always left me a bit cold and I think some of the enthusiasm about it has been in excess. Although there’s variety in how the holes play, most of the them look and feel similar. Much of this is about the limited terrain. But it’s always felt to me like everything here is a bit too calculated, that there was a bit too much effort to place every bunker just so. The angular shaping of everything also bothers me a bit. I think if they had let the details flow a bit more freely—a few bunkers placed seemingly at random, a few large, free form greens that sit simply on the terrain—the course would have a bit more character.

No. 6: American Dunes (Grand Haven). Perhaps because it’s a Jack Nicklaus design, American Dunes has gotten less attention from the architecture influencer crowd than Arcadia South. But this remake of the old Grand Haven golf course, which is the home of the Folds of Honor foundation that raises scholarship money for the children of fallen soldiers, is clearly of as high a standard as any of our new public courses. The site is sandy and Nicklaus and co. took full advantage of this, creating a collection of the most beautiful and interesting holes in the state.

The two nines have a bit of a different feel, with much of the front nine winding its way around ponds through forests and the back nine mostly set in a sandy expanse. But holes 4-6 are out in the sand and the first two of these, a drop shot par 3 to a sliver of green and a par 4 that winds its way around sand to a sunken green, are two of the finest holes on the course. The next stretch in open sand, holes 12-17 are arguably even stronger featuring two fine par 3s, one of the best long par 5s in the state with a great fall-away green at no. 13, and maybe the best long par 4 in the state no. 16, requiring a diagonal carry over sand on the approach. The vexing shorter par 4 14th with a cramped fairway between bunkers and a semi-blind uphill approach adds great variety and character.

Some might take an issue with the excessive number of approaches over ponds but I thought that two of these holes, the par 5 2nd with its diagonal pond carry on the approach and the par 4 8th with its semi-blind drive, were quite good. To me, the major weakness is the finishing hole, a narrow-but-dull par 5 that finishes with a very cliched approach to a green next to a pond. It may not be the best finish, but so much of what comes before is so good such that for me, this course definitely sits in the state’s top tier of public courses. If anything, I could rank it higher.

No. 5: Arcadia Bluffs—Bluffs (Arcadia). Certainly one course that most would have higher on a list of best Michigan public courses than I do is the original course at Arcadia Bluffs. And until my most recent visit in 2024 and when I sat down to think about my list of top 40 courses earlier this year, I did too. For the previous 20 years, I’d always thought that this was Michigan’s top public course, albeit by a close margin over several others.

I still think that the margin between all of my top 6 courses is small and there are probably a dozen rankings of them that I’d accept. But I thought a bit less of the Bluffs Course on my visit last year because of something that people have always said about it that finally struck me—it’s just too difficult given the difficult terrain. More specifically, the green complexes are too difficult, with too many wild interior contours and high edges where a slight miss can roll down a steep hill or into a deep bunker making the next shot almost impossible. Given the difficulty of the terrain and the windiness of the lakeside site, it’s just too much. I think I’ve become more sensitive to this layering of difficulty-on-difficulty in recent years and I called a few of the newer courses in my top 40 out for this.

But there’s also so much about the Bluffs Course that’s so good. I think the opening 5 holes constitute one of the best opening stretches in the state, with the par 5 3rd being on the shortest list of our best par 5s. The 5 par 5s in particular (with three in this opening stretch) are magnificent, and there’s probably no hole in the state more dramatic than the wild 11th, which tumbles downhill to the lake’s edge. Although they get less attention, there are a few fine inland long par 4s, especially nos. 7 and 16, the former a beautifully minimal hole with an open green and the latter snaking downhill to a green pitched at a brilliant diagonal over a deep trap on the right. Some of the par 3s may be a bit overworked but I’ve always liked the bold 17th with its green perched on a manmade cliff probably 20 feet above a grass abyss on the right.

And no matter how it’s rated, because of its beauty and drama, I think the Bluffs course will long continue to be no. 1 in Michigan among the general golfing public, which doesn’t appear to have been deterred in the slightest by the ever-increasing green fees.

No. 4: The Loop (Roscommon). Tom Doak’s The Loop is probably Michigan’s most innovative, but also its most polarizing public course. It’s innovative because it’s the only course in the state (or almost anywhere else) that’s reversible; 18 greens which can be played in a clockwise (Black Course) or counterclockwise (Red Course) direction. So it’s two 18-hole courses for the price of one.

But it’s polarizing for the greens and the conditioning. The greens are among the smaller sets in the state and many are narrow with convex edges. This combined with the conditioning—The Loop is by far the firmest course in the state, sitting on sand with all fescue fairways—make it difficult to hit and hold the greens. This is a source of frustration for everyone, but especially good players. I think that bigger greens with more interior contour but milder edges would have worked better. The Loop also has a very rustic look, with no extraneous shaping and few bunkers. If you miss the fairway here, you end up in the native wispy grass and brush which I think gives the course a great look (a bit heathland-like) and plays well, but which many probably find less attractive.

And I’ve certainly had my share of frustration with The Loop. But there can be no doubt that it’s one of the most brilliantly conceived courses in the state and has some of its most interesting holes, especially the short par 4 12th holes in both directions, the long par 3 13th and long par 4 14th on the Black, and the long par 4 finisher on the Red. And I absolutely love the conditions here. I’ve never played a course with such perfect links conditions…including on a dozen-and-a-half or so links courses in the UK and Ireland. This allows the opportunity to play interesting shots along the ground, something that often doesn’t work on ‘links-like’ courses. And the seniors love it because they get a ton of roll on their drives.

Bottom line is despite many frustrations in my 10-or-so rounds on The Loop, it remains one of the most intriguing courses that I’ve played and one to which I’d more eagerly return than several top courses that I’ve played far fewer times.

No. 3: Marquette—Greywalls (Marquette). Mike DeVries’ Greywalls to me is a lot like Arcadia Bluffs—it stands in a category of its own for visual spectacle, but combines very challenging terrain with a few too many difficult design features. Like The Loop but to an even greater degree, Greywalls has a few convex greens where a slight miss can send your ball down a steep hill from which you’ll have a very tough recovery. That combined with the almost-mountainous site—you really are playing up, over, and around grey granite walls—and the immaculate, firm conditioning makes for one of the toughest rounds of golf anywhere.

But while I’ve always been cranky about a few greens (namely the 1st and 14th), Greywalls’ list of the positives is so much longer than its list of negatives. Routing a course on this terrain must have been extremely difficult and DeVries did a brilliant job. There are only a few ~150 yard green-to-tee walks, which must have been incredibly difficult to achieve. And the routing pulls no punches, with some pretty severe uphill shots, piles of rocks in the middle of fairways, and narrow corridors between cliffs and drop-offs. It’s all great spectacle and gives the course so much character. I can’t think of a course that does a better job of melding design with its surroundings.

And there are many great holes, most of which are completely original because of the site. Save for the green, I love the massive, downhill par 5 1st. The par 4 4th, with a rock ledge dividing the fairway into high and low sections, is one of the best driving holes in the state. I love the boldness of the short par 4 5th with its drive uphill over a cliff and green at the base of another. Add to that the great downhill drive over all kinds of boulders to a great green on the long par 4 7th, all-world green contouring on the short par 4 10th, and a great long par 3 15th over a chasm to a huge green framed by hills of rock and gravel.

This may be the most unique and special of all of Michigan’s courses and I’m glad that it’s gotten the accolades that it has. If you’re on a northern Michigan golf trip, it’s worth tacking on a few hours’ drive up to Marquette to see it.

No. 2: Forest Dunes (Roscommon). In complete contrast to its newer sister course The Loop, Tom Weiskopf’s Forest Dunes is a traditional, immaculately contoured northern Michigan forest course. Actually, it’s on by far the tamest land of the highly regarded northern Michigan forested resort courses. But the land is quite good, gently rolling and with an excellent variety of landscapes—the words ‘Forest’ and ‘Dunes’ sum up what you get pretty well.

It’s the seamless blend of more intimate forested holes and more expansive holes in the open, sandy areas that makes Forest Dunes one of the top two courses in northern Michigan (along with Arcadia Bluffs) for most who play here. This course, unlike its sister, isn’t polarizing. And I think the holes have this same great flow between simpler and more dramatic. The opening two holes are interesting but modest in appearance. Then we get drama on the great par 5 5th that opens into one of the expansive sandy areas and the multi-route shorter par 4 6th. The par 5 7th is tamer again but then we turn the corner on the long par 4 8th back out into the open expanse behind the clubhouse. The back nine continues this great flow between forest and dunes landscapes and contains some of the state’s best holes including the shorter par 4s nos. 13 and 17 and the fine par 5 15th with its hidden green.

I’ve been playing Forest Dunes for over 20 years and every time is a joy. The greens are more modest than on some of my other favorite courses and I don’t like the split fairway long par 4 10th. But it’s a lovely walk, an interesting mix of holes, and a great mix of challenges. It’s worthy of some of the highest placements that it’s seen on top 100 public course lists and will be a favorite in Michigan for many years to come.

No. 1 Pilgrim’s Run (Pierson). I may be alone in this position but after playing Pilgrim’s Run several times over the past 20+ years, I finally decided to admit to myself when making my list of the top 40 courses that I’ve reviewed that I think it’s the best public course in Michigan. Save for the 350 yard gap between the 8th green and the 9th tee, I have nothing negative to say about it. The layout, through a moderately rolling mature forest, is very pretty. It has probably the best set of greens on any public course in the state, some with wonderful random folds, some with tiers, some more modest. And it has the best bunkering on any public course in the state, both shaped and placed beautifully.

This all adds up to my favorite collection of holes in the state. In a state with many great ones, the four par 5s are, in particular, outstanding. The opener requires precision off the tee but gives a great option to go at the green between large white pines or lay up safely out to the left for a good angle in. The photogenic 6th snakes beautifully uphill around bunkers while the 11th has a great option to skirt bunkers up the right to have a shot at the angled green. Other special holes and features include the narrow par 4 3rd with a lay-of-the-land green that’s one of my favorites anywhere, the short par 4 10th, the green on the par 4 12th, and the par 4 16th, which might be the prettiest and best pond hole on a state that’s full of them. And the drivable par 4 18th, doglegging around a pond, is an exciting and beautiful finish.

I’ve been reading the Google reviews for the courses on this list as I’ve been writing them up and everyone sounds as positive about Pilgrim’s Run as I do. With 704 reviews, it has a 4.9 rating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a positive set of Google reviews! It’s also gotten a lot of positive coverage from the social media golf influencers.

Given all of this, I don’t understand why Pilgrim’s Run isn’t much higher in the state course rankings. It makes Golf Digest and Golfweek’s lists of best-in-state, but nearer to the bottom than the top. I think that Pilgrim’s Run is easily one of Michigan’s 10 best courses, probably in the 4-6 range, and easily one of the top 100 US public courses, probably top 50. I just don’t see how, when you go through it hole-by-hole and feature-by-feature, you can say otherwise.

Two things have been on my travel to-do list for several years: (1) hiking in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and (2) visiting northern Minnesota, both to hike and to see some of its golf courses. Several of these, including the Quarry and the Legend at Giants Ridge, the Wilderness at Fortune Bay, and Deacon’s Lodge and the Classic in Brainerd have spent considerable time on the three golf magazine top 100 public course lists, which gave the impression that Minnesota might even be a better golf destination than northern Michigan.

So with some time on my hands in September 2025, I decided to travel west through the Upper Peninsula from Detroit, hitting Pictured Rocks and the Porcupine Mountains (both highly recommended) and then turning north at Duluth to try the Giants Ridge courses, the Wilderness at Fortune Bay, and to do some hiking in the Boundary Waters (the Brainerd courses are about 3 hours west, so I skipped them). This route brought me first to the Quarry at Giants Ridge, a 2004 Jeff Brauer design that forms half of the 36 hole complex (along with the Legend, also by Brauer) at the Giants Ridge golf and ski resort, about an hour-and-a-half north of Duluth. This course opened to much acclaim in 2004, winning Golf Digest’s award for best new upscale public course (Brauer's Wilderness at Fortune Bay, about 30 minutes up the road, won it in 2005). It continues to be ranked highly by both Golf Digest and (#58 best public) and Golfweek (#47 best public).

I didn’t know a ton about this course before I played but the name was promising—quarries often make great sites for golf courses, creating a kind of manmade landscape that lends itself to dramatic golf holes. And this has to be the best quarry site that I’ve seen. It’s moderately hilly and would be good for golf even without the quarry features. Yet the quarry features—the leftover rock walls and pits—never seem too severe for golf.

It’s hard to say without having seen the site before the course, but this may be in large part due to Brauer’s deft hand in navigating the site and shaping the holes. He’s mentioned that he took his inspiration from Tobacco Road (I also saw shades of Jim Engh a few times) but it seems to me—and I mean this in the best way—that the Quarry is like Tobacco Road on Valium. Brauer never overdoes things with crazily built-up and contoured green complexes and blind shots the way that Mike Strantz did at Tobacco Road. To be sure, there are some challenging features and plenty of opportunities to lose balls. But Brauer’s design features are tempered, taking advantage of the unusual opportunities that the site created but not trying to one-up it by adding a lot of difficult design features.

I thought this was a nice change of pace for modern courses on dramatic sites. On too many of these—Greywalls and Arcadia Bluffs along with Tobacco Road come immediately to mind—the architect added too much difficulty in the form of crazy green contours, steep drop-offs around greens, and deep bunkers, turning a course that would have always been difficult owing to the nature of the site into one that’s unplayable for most golfers. Many golfers will lose a lot of balls at the Quarry, but at least they won’t four-putt, putt the ball off the green into a bunker, or hit a good approach shot than runs 25 yards off the edge of the green down a 20 foot hill a half-dozen times. My one criticism is that the shaping around the fairways and greens is often a bit fussy. A lot of this blends in with the leftover quarry mounding but there’s a lot here that was, I think, unnecessary and several of the holes would have had a cleaner look without it.


The par 4 first plays 410 yards from the 6,700 yard blue tees, which on these soft bentgrass fairways should be plenty enough for almost anyone. It’s a tame-looking drive but there’s more trouble than appears—if you take the direct line to the green, there’s a blind, leftover pit from the quarry about 260 yards out. So you’ll either need to lay back or play up the right side.

The long par 5 second may not just be the best hole on this course, but one of the best in the state of Minnesota. It’s a great par 5 and a great example of how the Quarry is well-described as ‘Tobacco Road-lite’—a hole that’s visually dramatic and challenging if you try to pull of the heroic shot, but one where there a no hidden extra layers of difficulty or unpleasant surprises. You can tell pretty well what’s going on from the tee here.

And what’s going on is that you’ll have a choice on your second shot: lay up down the fairway to the left or carry the quarry to a narrow strip of fairway short of the green on the right. You’ll need to go about 470 yards in two shots for the latter. But the problem here isn’t so much the distance, it’s that even if you can make the carry, this stretch of fairway leading into the green is about 20 yards wide between a bunker and a hill. So it’s a pretty low percentage shot. Still, that didn’t stop anyone in front of me from trying…and failing.

There’s isn’t too much to say about the mid-length par 4 third except that the further away you play from the bunker right, the blinder your approach will be over the two bunkers short-left of the green. I prefer the (lack of) shaping around this fairway and green to what we see on much of the rest of the course.

I thought the par 3 fourth looked pretty innocuous until I zapped it with my yardage finder and saw that it was 225 yards (the back tee is 270!). It’s a really well-designed hole for this length, with the front of the green being completely open. Unfortunately, whether because of the maintenance regime or the recent weather, the run up shot was impossible, with even low long-irons stopping dead in the soft bent grass short of the green.

I thought that the par 5 fifth was almost as good as the second. There’s a bit more interest off the tee here, with the fairway curving left around a waste bunker and three bunkers collecting errant shorts out to the right. You can cut off quite a bit of length if you either sling a draw around the bunker or make the carry of only about 220 over the right edge of it. That’ll bring the green well within reach on your second.

But there’s a lot of danger here; left of the fairway is all junk and the only way to run the ball onto the green is at the front-left, which requires you to play close to the junk. Even if you’re not going for the green, the green angles front-left to back-right and is narrow from the right side of the fairway, favoring an approach from near the junk on the left. So it’s really a case of needing to take on risk on both the drive and the approach for the reward of hitting the green in two and still benefitting from taking risk on the second even if you’re laying up to prevent from having an awkward third. Whatever you do here, it’s an interesting hole. And I think that makes it a great one.

The short par 4 sixth doesn’t require so much thinking off the tee, but it does require execution to hit the 40 yards of fairway between lost balls left and right. The green is probably over 50 yards from its left to right edges and the approach will be simple if the pin is on the left. But if it’s on the right—as it was when I played it—the green narrows to about 40 feet deep and you’ll have to carry a deep depression to get to it.

The drop shot par 3 seventh is also a bit Engh-esque with the green being sort-of upside-down T-shaped with the center of the T being a high tier between mounds back-right and left. Again, I liked this green because I think it plays well; wherever they put the pin, you can’t go wrong with playing to the center of the green. But if you want to get aggressive, you have slopes that will allow you to work your ball to the pin.

Like the sixth, the eighth demands that you stand and deliver on the drive, although the fairway does open up on the left past about 250. But this hole is about 100 yards longer, so this time you need to hit a driver. The approach to the green also requires accuracy as it narrows between ridges left over from the quarry days left and right.

I think the 350 yard par 4 ninth plays through the middle of the old quarry but Brauer was gracious to cut through the ridges to allow us to see both the fairway and the green (something that Mike Strantz might not have done). Standing in the fairway looking up through the gap to the green, this hole feels a lot like one on Tobacco Road or Royal New Kent. But save for a false front that requires you to carry your approach at least 5 yards onto the green, the green is large and gently contoured, making this hole much easier than similar-looking holes on a Strantz course.

Ten is another ~350 yard par 4 where it’s best not to try to do too much off the tee. You probably only need to hit it about 220, although it will undoubtedly be tempting for many to try the 230 yard carry over the pond on the left. The Red Pine is perfectly positioned to knock your ball into the pond if you attempt it and hit one a bit weak right.

With its wide, shallow green, the 140 yard eleventh has a bit of the flavor of a Mike Strantz par 3. But I like this one more than holes like six or seventeen at Tobacco Road because there’s a reasonable amount of depth to any pin for a hole of this length. And I also how the green is built up on the ledge, which I think both looks good and makes for a pretty stiff penalty for vanity club choices and weak iron shots.

Running downhill between pines to a green framed by seemingly endless forest, the long par 4 twelfth will look familiar to anyone who has played golf in northern Michigan. I found the shaping at the back of the green to be a fit fussy and would have preferred the look without the mounds, but these did create an interesting illusion—while the green looks like it slopes back-to-front, the first ~2/3 of the green slope front-to-back.

If you’ve seen a picture of the Quarry, it was probably of the drivable (~300 yards) par 4 thirteenth. This seems to be the course’s most famous hole and for good reason; it’s readily drivable but to do so, you’ll have to carry a ~10 foot high wall of long grass just short of the green. If you don’t think you can do this, there are several lay up options. Anything near the wall will leave you a blind shot. If you want to avoid this, you can lay up to the high part of the fairway left of the centerline bunker, no more than about 220 yards. And getting a good view of the green is important because it’s probably 60 yards wide, angled from front-right to back-left, and probably has more interior contour than any on the course.

I like this hole and I think it fits in well with Quarry’s collection of short par 4s. It’s a bit busier than holes like six, nine, and ten, but this adds variety and the options here are sensible. Like on eleven, I like both the look of the grass wall in front of the green and how it plays. We’re awash in drivable par 4s on newer courses but for a course built in the early 2000s, this hole was quite original.


At only about 500 yards on the card, the fourteenth seems like a short par 5. But it’s uphill and, at least on this day, was playing into the wind. So it certainly didn’t feel like it. The green is in a punchbowl and there are several hide-the-flag pin locations, which should dictate where you lay up (if doing so).

By most accounts, the long par 4 fifteenth is probably the most questionable hole on the course. That’s because the fairway ends abruptly about 180 yards short of the middle of the green meaning it’s a lay up followed by a long iron, a concept I dislike in principle. This one bothers me less than most of these because the approach is both a looker and well-designed for a long shot. And there is a lot to be gained by good placement of the drive; you want to get it as close to the edge as you can, otherwise you'll have a very long approach.

Sixteen is a kind-of S-shaped par 5 that probably looks a little more interesting than it actually plays, unless you’re a short hitter. The carry up the left side was just a hair over 200 yards and if you can make this, the second carry over junk toward the green is easily doable. Both landing areas are quite wide so more than any other hole on the course, this one gives you an opportunity to swing away.

After about a 300 yard walk under the entrance road past the clubhouse—really the only walk of any distance on the course; the Quarry is very walkable—we come to a longish par 3 over a pond. It’s best to keep this one simple; there’s ample room on the right side of the green and you should always aim there. Left is nothing but trouble…as I learned.

The long par 4 finisher is a bit awkward, but I found it to be one of the best holes on the course. It’s a sharp dogleg left and the fairway appears to run out into a lake if you go through the dogleg. It’s possible to run through the dogleg, but you’d probably have to hit it about 280 going down the middle to do so.

Still, there’s strong reason to either cut one up the tree line on the left or hit a slinging draw. That’s because anything out to the right will leave a very long approach. And if you’re on the right edge of the fairway, you’ll have to hit over a wooden fence than runs along the right side of the hole and guards against a steep drop down into the lake. A drive up the left side will leave a shorter approach and a better view into the green.

I’m having a difficult time getting a handle on my feelings about the Quarry at Giants Ridge. My sense is that it deserves a spot on a top 100 public course list, although probably near the bottom. I think it’d be one of the top 10 public courses if it were in Michigan, although also near the bottom. That puts it in the company of courses like Arcadia Bluffs—South, Stoatie Brae, and the (horribly underrated) Fazio Course at Treetops. Good company, but not on the level of Forest Dunes, Arcadia Bluffs, or (in my mind at least) Pilgrim’s Run.

But there’s a pretty strong list of positives. One, the land is excellent and afforded a lot of opportunities to build special holes. Two, the routing is very good, with the course being completely walkable (although as in Michigan, no one walks it). Three, the course has a handful of truly excellent holes. I thought that the two par 5s on the front and the finishing hole were among the best of their types that I’ve seen. The course also has a nice variety of short par 4s, highlighted by the drivable thirteenth. I also liked the par 3s, although I wouldn’t say that any struck me as special on the level of the holes that I’ve highlighted. And there aren’t any bad holes.

I guess the issues that keep me from thinking most highly of the course—or to put it concretely, thinking that it’s a Doak 6 rather than a 7—are the shaping and the quality of the other holes. As I’ve mentioned throughout, the shaping is overly fussy. There are a lot of unnecessary mounds around the fairways and greens. They’re alright from a landscape architecture standpoint because they blend in with the bumpy landscape left over from the mining. But I think I would have preferred it if Brauer had kept his shaping to a minimum, which would have highlighted the leftover mining landforms. And while the top 3 or 4 holes are excellent, I feel that the majority of the rest are just good. When comparing courses, I think it’s important to compare their 50th and 25th percentile holes, not just their best ones. And while the Quarry comes out very well when comparing best holes, I think it falls short of Michigan’s best (or the Pfau Course at IU, or Pine Needles) when comparing the median and lesser holes.

Still, if you’re in northern Minnesota and you’ve got your golf clubs, the Quarry is worth a trip to play. And the combination of this and the Legends at Giants Ridge and the Wilderness at Fortune Bay make a good, short golf trip. Better yet, bring a pair of hiking boots and a canoe. While the Arcadia—Roscommon—Mackinac triangle of northern Michigan might beat this part of northern Minnesota for golf, it doesn’t compare in its depth of beautiful, remote places for other outdoor activities.

In my recent ranking of the top 40 courses that I’ve reviewed, I commented several times on how courses had experienced a reversal of fortune on the various golf magazine top courses lists over the 25+ years since I’ve started looking at them. In most cases—like with several of the London heathland courses—these reversals had been in their favor. But for a few other courses, the lists have become less kind. That’s to be expected—fashions change and the bandwagon latches onto the newest thing, discarding older things, albeit sometimes with less than a full reassessment.

But of all of America’s highly regarded public courses, I’m not sure that there’s one that has fallen as far as William Flynn’s Cascades Course at the Homestead Resort in western Virginia. When I first started following the lists, this was commonly considered one of America’s 5 greatest public courses, easily one of its top 100 overall, and was a regular feature on Golf Magazine’s top 100 courses in the world. Over the last 20 years however, it has fallen off all the US and world top 100 lists. And more than its fall in the rankings (although probably not unrelated), it’s just a place that I don’t hear about anymore. Pebble Beach and Pinehurst, the other two high end golf destinations in the late 1990s, remain at or near the top of the list but the Homestead has fallen from being perhaps no. 3 among America’s golf destinations to being…well, I have no idea. I don’t get the sense that it’s considered to be a major golf destination anymore.

So for me, seeing the Cascades was a real curiosity. It’s a course I really wanted to see 25 years ago, but it just never happened then and I—apparently along with everyone else—kind of lost interest in the intervening years with all the new exciting courses. I wasn’t sure whether the course was (1) overrated in the past—perhaps out of deference to Sam Snead, who was the pro here for many years—or (2) whether it had been unfairly disregarded, replaced by the latest hot thing. Or perhaps (3) we just lacked great public courses 25 years ago and as we got great new, more dramatic options like Bandon Dunes and Arcadia Bluffs, the spotlight understandably shifted away from this more modest, mountain valley course toward them.

I’d say that (3) is probably the best explanation. This is not a course that’s made for the modern social media spotlight. The surroundings are gorgeous, but the design features—the bunkers, the green contours—do not jump out. If fact, quite the opposite—Flynn’s design appears always to be trying to keep a low profile, even when a lot of work was done. There’s a lot of sense in his modest approach to bunkering and greens contouring. Flynn lets the features of the land—numerous hills and creeks—provide the main challenge. Where the terrain is more modest in the middle of the back nine, we start to get more bunkering. Flynn certainly wasn’t shy about moving dirt (witness the 4th or the 8th greens) but he did it out of necessity when he faced challenging terrain and did his best to conceal his work.

So all-in-all, I don’t think the downward reassessments of the Cascades have been unfair. Indeed I was surprised when I looked at the Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, and Golfweek top 100 public course lists that the Cascades was in the top 50 of each (35, 42, and 38 respectively). I was under the impression that it had fallen quite a bit further on at least some of them. I suspect that these rankings aren’t too far off. Still, the Cascades is very different from the public courses that get all the attention today and it’d be good if more golf architecture enthusiasts visited and contemplated the Cascades to experience a different type of great golf course.


The first hole shows however that modest doesn’t necessarily mean easy. This is a simple looking hole. But from the ~430 yard tips, it’s one of the harder opening holes that I’ve played. The fairway is less than 30 yards wide but on the right side, there’s a bunker at ~250 and two large Black Walnut trees about ~280 out. So it’s effectively even narrower. The green is deep but only about 40 feet wide for its entire length and guarded by two bunkers on each side. For me, it looked like the opening hole of a course that was trying to host the US Open!

While the first hole is more hard than interesting, the long par 4 second is both. It’s the first of three holes on the hilly property across US 220 (the ‘Sam Snead Highway’) and it uses the left-to-right sloping ground beautifully. It’s only about 200 yards to get past the fairway bunker on the right but it’s probably best to aim up the left side of the fairway, which allows you to play up the open entrance at the front-left of the green. The entrance to all but the left side of the green is blocked if you’re up the right. At the same time, you have a flatter lie and probably a better view of the green.

So there are tradeoffs in the different strategies for playing this hole. In any case, I found it to be one of the most beautiful and interesting holes on the course.

Three is a funky little par 4 of about 300 yards but, according to Google Earth, it plays more than 100 feet uphill from the tee to the back of the green! I knew it was uphill, but I didn’t realize it was that uphill! The hole works quite well. It’s a good example of the old type of short par 4 that wasn’t supposed to be drivable and the drive does a good job of testing your long iron accuracy. Miss right and you’re blocked by trees. Miss left and you’re playing off the side of a hill…and maybe also blocked by trees.

But this isn’t a ski hill (that’s back down the road by the hotel) so we can’t keep going up the mountain and the long par 3 4th comes right back down. According to Google Earth, way down…it says it’s about a 130 foot drop from the 215 yard back tees to the middle of the green! I’ve got to be honest, it didn’t feel nearly that far. It didn’t feel like as much of a drop as some of our northern Michigan drop shot par 3s. I did some investigation and there’s only one I’ve played that has more vertical—the 3rd hole on the par 3 course at Treetops, which drops 140 feet over roughly the same distance. That hole feels like way more of a drop than this one. Maybe the drops in Michigan feel greater is that the surrounding hills (mountains) here are much higher and the background makes the drops seem smaller. Or maybe there’s an issue with using Google Earth to judge differences in elevation changes at small scale. I suspect it's the latter.

In any case, Flynn built a wonderful hole. There’s plenty of space short right and the green is built up high enough such that it’s difficult to tell whether the green slopes front-to-back or back-to-front. That’s true of several of the other hillside greens as well and I’ve never played a course where I had a more difficult time reading putts than the Cascades.

Although there’s a tunnel to cross under the Sam Snead, I decided to pay homage to some of the great London Heathland courses by crossing it on foot—it’s certainly nowhere near as challenging a crossing as some of those.

But there’s plenty of challenge in the par 5 fifth. This hole plays almost 600 yards and illustrates well the principle that I mentioned at the beginning: where the terrain is more challenging, the design features tend to be simpler. The only challenges from tee to green here are the hill that blocks your approach if you drive it up the right side of the fairway and the length. Actually it’s quite important to drive it up the left side here because that gives you a partial view of what lies ahead and spares you from having to either club down or loft your fairway wood over a pretty steep hill.

The shortish par 4 sixth is the first of several holes to play alongside a stream. Distance isn’t so important and because the fairway narrows to less than 25 yards past about 260, it’s smart to lay back.

Seven is probably the least interesting hole on the front nine but it demands good iron play on the approach as the ball will be below your feet and the shot plays about 30 feet uphill. A bunker somewhere in the left-center of the fairway wouldn’t be a bad addition to give you something to think about on your drive.

One hole that certainly doesn’t need any additions or any other kind of changes is the short par 3 eighth. This is one of the finest short par 3s that I’ve seen thanks to its unusual green.

Because the green was built into the side of a mountain sloping from short-left to long-right, naturally the green is built up in the back-right. But the front half of the green is allowed to slope toward the middle while the back-right is built up high enough to also slope slightly toward the middle, creating a subtle bowl effect. What this means is that wherever the pin is located, you should play toward the middle. It’s especially stupid to play at the pin when it’s in the front because of how narrow the green is here and how tight the bunkers are to its edge.

The fine golf continues with the long par 4 ninth. This is probably the widest fairway so far and there’s no trouble out there but as on the 5th, there’s a reason—if you don’t hit it at least 265, you’ll get stuck on a hill and have a blind second. I think Flynn wanted to reward the long ball here and wanted to encourage you to swing away.

So that’s good. But what I really loved about this hole was the green site. Flynn built this green right where the land shifts from being softly downhill to being softly uphill. It’s both a perfect natural green site and allows you to take advantage of the slope to run one in if your drive got stuck on the side of the hill. There’s a bunker at the front-left to keep you honest but the right side is open. Like the second, this is a superb long par 4.

Apparently Arnold Palmer thought that the 375 yard par 4 tenth was one of the finest par 4s in the country. I’m not sure why. It’s a pretty uninteresting looking drive, except of the obvious trouble on the right. But what you don’t see is that at about 220 on the right and 240 out on the left, the fairway is interrupted by a steep ridge and drops about 15 feet downhill to a flat, from where you have a short pitch over a creek to a small, well-bunkered green.

I guess in Palmer’s day, it might have been more of a challenge to reach the downslope in the middle of the fairway and there would have been some advantage to skirting the danger up the right side to shorten the distance to the it. But if that was the intention, it doesn’t work for any but the shortest hitters today—I hit a mediocre drive up the middle and made it easily. I think this hole would work better if it were lengthened by about 30 yards or if bunkers were placed up the left to force greater accuracy.

There have been some changes to the Cascades over the past 20 years to undo decades of neglect and misguided redesigns (by—you guessed it—Robert Trent Jones Sr.). Probably the most significant changes have been tree removal and I think the most significant tree removal has occurred in this corner of the property around 10, 11, and 12.

Whereas the par 3 eleventh was once hemmed in by trees, now you can see through the green down the twelfth fairway. It’s a beautiful view. And the original Flynn bunkering has been restored on this hole, with a large bunker left of the green having been removed. It’s another fine par 3.

Running along a stream on the left, twelve used to always be on lists of America’s best holes. But I always remember it being listed as a par 4 while the card today has it listed as a par 5 of about 510 yards. I think the additional yardage is probably a good thing (although that 510 yard tee box was in pretty rough shape…) but given the length the kids hit it these days, it should still be called a par 4.

But none of that matters for the merits of the hole, which is one of the finest holes of this length that I’ve seen. Although there’s been significant tree removal on the hill up the right, it’s still a narrow drive because they’ve left a black walnut near the creek on the left. I don’t mind this at all—we’ve recently played a few wide-open longer holes, now it’s time for a more exacting one.

The approach is at least as exacting. If you’ve hit a poor drive, you may have trouble carrying two bunkers that interrupt the fairway about 75 yards short of the green. But however far you’ve hit, you’ll need to be highly accurate on the approach because the green is about 45 feet wide and bunkered both left and right. There’s plenty of safe space short but it’s important to keep in line with the green if playing short because the narrowness of the green would make pitches from the left side tough.

This hole has everything—it’s a looker, it’s interesting, and it’s very challenging.

And actually the par 4 13th—itself about 440 yards—is similar. This hole also doglegs left along the same stream although this time there’s also a bunker on the right—just at the distance where you’d want to drive it. The approach is also over crossing bunkers, although this time it’s a diagonal stretch running from short-right to long-left that will provide significant trouble if you’ve missed the fairway right. The green is open in front and a bit wider than on the previous hole.

I thought this hole was every bit as good as the twelfth. Really, the only thing that might keep them from being on the short list of the best back-to-back holes that I’ve seen is that they’re too similar to each other. Still, they don’t look or feel the same from the tee and this hole plays as more of a dogleg. So maybe they should be on that list!

I think that the only list that the long par 4 fourteenth should be on is a list of holes that should be restored. This green was moved back and to the left by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in the early 1960s to try to make the hole tougher. I’d say he succeeded—in addition to being the course’s longest par 4 at 470 yards, it also has the toughest green, with a mound in the middle that repels balls.

Flynn’s green was about 30 yards short and right of this one if it were restored, the hole would still be plenty long enough at ~440 yards, especially given that it plays uphill. Still, the current version is not a bad hole in its own right and fulfills its original goal of being a tough par 4.

Also altered by Jones Sr.—to accommodate the new fourteenth green—was the long par 3 fifteenth. I don’t know why needing to move the tee necessitated redesigning the green, but he did that too. The current hole is a good challenge and fair, with plenty of room to run the ball onto the green. But it’s over dull ground and the design features don’t really give it any character.

Really this whole section of the property out behind the clubhouse comprising holes 1, and 14-16 is pretty dull and suffers from being too open, which is inconsistent with the surrounding forested landscape. Furthermore, the trees that it does have—a lot of non-native Norway Spruces—look scraggly and ugly after several decades of growth. I think it’d be good for the club to develop a long-term plan to improve this section of the property aesthetically, especially because it’s what you see when you arrive at the course and it makes a pretty poor first impression. I’d suggest removing all the Spruces and planting locally common trees like Oaks and Lindens, allowing long grass to grow around them as they mature.

​The qualities of the famous par 5 16th make up for some of that, however. First, it’s a great driving hole, with a cluster of bunkers guarding the inside of the dogleg right. At 245-275 yards, they were the perfect carry distance for me although I think they could also use some trees along the stream that runs between this and the next hole to prevent longer hitters from bombing one right of all the bunkers and leaving a short iron in. I thought that there must have been trees here originally that the staff removed but the historical imagery on Google Earth shows that only one or two trees have been removed in the last 25 years. Again, some reforestry here would help.

What has been removed is a bunker on the left side of the layup zone which would have made the lay up tricky. But—and maybe just because I saw it featured in so many golf books and magazines when I was younger—the approach to the green is an American classic. It’s just a shot over a pond with two backing bunkers. But the pond being near green level makes it distinctive. Apparently this green was added by Jones and Flynn’s green was on this side of the pond. That’s one Flynn feature which I don’t think they should restore.

I think writers used to talk of sixteen and seventeen as great consecutive par 5s. But I didn’t think much of seventeen. Part of the issue—at least for me—is that the drive is unappealing. The cart path on the left is ugly and I think some trees near the stream and some long grass would make it more attractive.

But it’s not without interest. You probably need to hit it 290 up the left side to get a view of the green. Otherwise you’ll either need to layup or hit a pretty good hook all while staring right at the pond right of the green. The hole is only about 515 yards and you can probably reach the green if you hit a long one up the right side. But the further right you are, the more pond you’ll have to carry on the approach.

Really, it’s a pretty good hole from a playing perspective. I just find it a bit visually unappealing and as with the rest of this section of the property, would benefit from some reforestry. I think it also might make the approach a bit more interesting if the green were closer to the pond.

The eighteenth was always noteworthy because it’s a par 3 and few great course finish on one. It’s neither the world’s most visually appealing par 3 nor is among the more creatively designed, with a fairly standard set of two bunkers, one a the front-left and the other at the front-right.

But this hole is a bit more clever than most of the other similar-looking par 3s that I’ve seen. One, the green is much deeper than it looks. Two, it’s also less severely sloped from back to front than you’d expect. And that means that you should never try to go at a front pin. Because one, it’s very narrow between the bunkers there. And two, if you miss short, your ball will roll all the way back down the hill, being saved from the pond only by a strip of rough. So it’s a good, exacting mid-long iron to finish, but there’s plenty of room to play safe.

The Homestead had been off my radar for so long as a golf destination that I didn’t even realize that there used to be three courses here and that Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s Lower Cascades course had been closed…all the way back in 2012! This place has changed ownership several times in the last 25 years, an indication that not all had been going well (naturally, the Lower Cascades was closed when it was owned by a private equity group).

Now the Homestead is part of the Omni group of luxury hotels and I would imagine that its future is, at least for awhile, secure. The current ownership seems to view golf as one among several outdoor activities—also including horse riding, shooting, fly fishing and, in the winter, skiing—rather than as the focal outdoor activity. Naturally with the resort’s history as a mineral hot springs destination, spa and other pampering services are also a core part of its offering. And family activities appear to be high on the list of priorities; I saw several young families and family activities are mentioned prominently on the resort’s website.

Obviously I have little reason to question these as business decisions. And the resort seemed pretty busy…although the hotel is huge, so who knows where they stand relative to their potential capacity. But I’d also say that it’s a loss to the world of golf if this place is no longer focusing on being a golf resort. I didn’t get a chance to play it, but the Old Course looked very good—over a hillier and, to be honest, more interesting looking piece of property even than the Cascades. I didn’t get a chance to see the Lower Cascades property, which is downstream from the wetlands behind the 16th green. But Robert Trent Jones Sr. built it during the height of his career in the early 1960s and I’m sure it was worth seeing given the topographic interest that any course in this area will inevitably have. I’m sure that the property would be a tantalizing prospect for redevelopment by one of today’s top architects. If they built a great course there, I’d imagine that this place could regain its former standing as one of the premier golf resorts.

This doesn’t appear to be the direction that the Homestead is going. And that’s ok. It means that the Cascades is likely to continue in its current status as a hidden gem among America’s top public courses. And that status does, in a way, feel right; the Cascades is much more modest-appearing than any of the attention-grabbing new courses. I think it would underwhelm a lot of the new golf crowd that’s used to big flashy bunkers and crazy greens.

Still, this course is not being neglected. Everything was in tremendous shape (as it should be for what’s usually a $300 green fee…) and there’s been a lot of gradual tree removal and bunker restoration over the past 20 years. I think that a restoration of the creek in front of the fifth green and of Flynn’s fourteenth and fifteenth holes are the next things to do. I also think that they should develop a plan to improve the aesthetics of the middle of the back nine and maybe the occasional fairway bunker to enhance the driving challenge.

But honestly, I really enjoyed the Cascades as-is and would happily return to play it again. Other golf course enthusiasts should consider taking a detour from the usual destinations into the mountains of western Virginia and give it a try.

No. 5: Pacific Dunes (Oregon, USA)

Of all of the modern courses that I’ve seen, perhaps none is more important than Pacific Dunes. While it was neither the first course at Bandon Dunes, the father of 21st century golf destinations, nor Tom Doak’s first course, it is the course that established Doak’s reputation as the go-to architect if you had a great piece of property. It’s the course that made Doak’s career, transforming him from a guy known mostly for his controversial writings into one whose name is at or near the top of the list for every big new project. So I think it’s a seminal course among modern courses, surpassed in importance perhaps only by Sand Hills.

Both before and after Pacific Dunes, Tom Doak was known for building courses with heavily contoured greens. But of all the Doak courses that I’ve played (probably 7 or 8), Pacific Dunes has the least-contoured greens. Instead, Pacific Dunes’ greens are often narrow and angled to favor a shot coming from a certain part of the fairway, placing a premium on driving and especially iron play. There’s a big controversy about whether angles matter but most seem to agree that when the ground is firm, they matter because you need a longer runway into your target destination. And on this sandy, windy seaside site, the ground is likely to be firm, making this a very good foundational concept for the course.

Still, there’s a lot of danger around these greens and it’s often wise to play conservatively into them, identifying the safe side and playing towards it. But this still requires precision, in addition to course knowledge and discipline, making Pacific Dunes probably the toughest course at the resort. It’s a good thing that Doak didn’t heavily contour the putting surfaces, which would have made it all a bit much. I wish that the restraint that Doak showed here had been more influential on modern architecture.

The other noteworthy thing about Pacific Dunes is its odd mix of holes, with four par 3s and 3 par 5s on the back nine. While the sand dunes and ocean frontage make Pacific Dunes a great piece of property, it has some limitations relative to the other great properties of the past few decades. The property is not that large, it’s narrow and awkward in spots, and good chunk of the middle is less topographically interesting. Rather than move a lot of earth or allow for a few bad holes, Doak chose an unconventional mix of holes. It was a brilliant idea and helped prove that Doak wasn’t just a guy who could write brilliantly, but could develop brilliant solutions in practice.

And, of course, there are many great holes. While each of the three opening holes is very good, the first great hole is the long par 4 4th, one of two long holes running along the coast. This hole is obviously spectacular, but it’s also a good example of how combining a spectacular feature with simple design elements can make a great hole. Because of the flat land here, Doak needed to do something to make a hole here something more than a pretty picture. He did this with three elements: (1) a cluster of bunkers on the left in the driving zone, (2) a second cluster short and left of the green, and (3) a narrow, deep green angled toward the right side of the fairway. This strongly favors a drive that hugs the coastline. Simple and brilliant, taking full  advantage of a great natural feature.

The run of great holes continues from here. I loved the par 3 5th, playing back up into the dunes with plenty of safe space at the front-left but where challenging back pins courts danger. The short par 4 6th may be inland, but deploys a similar concept as the 4th to similar great effect. While there’s almost endless fairway left, the elevated, narrow green opens toward the right side of the fairway. The angle into the green from the left side of the fairway is very awkward and it might be best—even for shots less than 100 yards—to play to the front of the green to avoid the nasty bunker left and the steep runoff at the back-right. 7 is another long par 4, but one with a generous where the premium is on driving distance into the heavily bunkered green and approach. The mid-length par 4 8th is the rare dogleg where the best angle in is at the outside of the dogleg and the challenge with the drive is to get as close to a clump of trees there as you can without going in them.

What stands out about the back nine is how often you have to shift gears between holes. That’s in part because of the unconventional mix of holes—4 par 3s, 3 par 5s, and only 2 par 4s—but also because the routing changes directions several times and the wind makes even similar length holes play very different from each other. The terrain on much of the back is flatter and Doak used par 5s to eat up this less interesting terrain, making prolific use of bunkers on each of them. But you might not notice many of the bunkers because Doak located them at a variety of distances and whether they come into play is a function of the wind, which changes direction at different times of the year. I found the par 5 12th to be quite open and simple, but that might not be the case in the summer when the wind comes more from the north and several of the bunkers that I ignored come into play. The opposite was true on the 15th and especially the very long, tight par 5 18th. I noticed all the bunkers on those.

To be sure, there are several great holes on the back as well. The short par 3 11th and long par 4 13th play along the coast and often feature in the resort’s promotional material. The former is an especially brilliant short par 3 and exemplifies a classic design principle, one which is used repeatedly on Pacific Dunes—the deeper you go into the green, the greater danger you court. But it’s also possible to use the slopes right of the green to work one into the tight back section. The 13th, with its green set against a massive sand blowout, isn’t quite as demanding as 4 from the tee and there’s a bit more room on the approach. But what seemed to me to be ample space might not seem so ample if the hole had been playing into the wind.

For me, it’s a pretty close call between Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails as to which is the best course at Bandon. The irony in comparing the two is that I think Pacific Dunes is disadvantaged by its property. It may have the coastline, but much of the terrain is less interesting and the property is less expansive. And I think Bandon Trails is prettier.

But the relative disadvantages of this site make Doak’s course all the more impressive. Many architects would have failed to build 18 functional holes here, let alone 18 that work collectively and individually. Doak’s unconventional routing and mix of holes are the key to this. Moreover, Pacific Dunes doesn’t suffer from over-designed green complexes like several other Doak courses. It’s still very difficult, but the difficulty is at the sides of the greens and you can reduce the danger significantly by learning where the better places to miss are and hedging in those directions. I wonder if, knowing the limitations of the site, Doak decided to keep his design features in check, as I suspect Mike Strantz did at Caledonia. Or it could have just been that given the success of the first Bandon course, Tom Doak knew that Pacific Dunes could be his big break, poured everything he could into getting it right, and was extra careful to avoid anything that might stir up controversy, something there was already more than enough of surrounding his name.

No. 4: Royal St. George’s (England, UK)

Of all the courses that have been part of the Open rota for at least a few decades, the one that seems to get the least love is Royal St. George’s. The headline comment on this of course was by Jack Nicklaus, who said that the Open courses ‘get worse the further south you go.’ Well, Royal St. George’s, on the southeast coast of England, is a good few hundred miles south of the next furthest south Open course. So that gives you an idea of what Nicklaus thought of it.

I can understand why professional golfers might take issue with this course. There are a lot of blind shots. And if you’re not hitting it well, there can be a lot more. And the part of the course where there are fewer blind shots—the relatively flat middle of the back nine—more than makes up for this with bunkers, creeks, and OB. Long story short, it’s a very difficult golf course. It’s also probably the most disorienting links course because it’s on a huge piece of property and the holes go every direction imaginable, with two holes rarely facing the same way. This course really throws a lot at you!

But while all of those are sources of frustration if you’re a professional trying to shoot good scores (or at least avoid bad ones) in a big tournament, I think they’re strengths if you’re trying to critique the golf course. Royal St. George’s has so much variety. So many of the holes are completely original. There’s never a spot on the course where holes run together in your mind because each hole is so different from the others and consecutive holes are usually especially different from each other.

The core strength, what enables this incredible variety, is the property, which is about as perfect a piece of linksland as you could imagine. This dimensions of this piece of land are pretty much the opposite of those at Rye—expansive in every direction, offering unlimited routing opportunities. But like Rye, the land consists largely of pretty significant sand dunes, creating a lot of challenges if you want to build playable holes with good visibility. There is a section of the back nine where the dunes become much smaller in scale and form a series of low ridges, which provides an excellent contrast to the wilder landscape of the front nine and gives Royal St. George’s the most diverse set of holes that I’ve seen on a links course.

Like many championship courses, the opening hole here is modest. But the interest picks up quickly. The long par 4 2nd, doglegging left around bunkers and then sand dunes, is a world-class driving hole. And what’s arguably the highlight of the course comes early—the famous long par 4 4th, where we have the option to carry a massive sand dune and bunker up the right side. It’s an important carry to make because the fairway left of this slopes left and your ball is likely to kick into the dunes. Plus the right side of the fairway offers much better visibility and an open ramp into the green, which has to be one of the nastiest on any long par 4 in the world, with a false front seemingly bigger than the flat(tish) part. Still, there’s plenty of safety short of the green. Put this one with Swinley Forest’s 9th and 12th on the list of the world’s best long par 4s.

The rest of the front nine is absolutely outstanding. We face completely blind drives over dune ridges on the approach to the par 4 5th and the drive on the dogleg left par 5 7th. There’s ample safe space on the far side of both, but it’s important to keep your drive close to the dunes on 7 because it can be a long way home otherwise. While I like the famous ‘Maiden’ par 3 6th tucked into the dunes surrounded by bunkers, the best hole in the second half of the front nine is the mid-length par 4 9th, where you drive into a chute between the dunes and then play uphill to a green where neither the angle of the green nor its contours favor a shot played from anywhere in the fairway. But there is ample safe space at the front-right of the green and, because you shouldn’t have too long an approach off a good drive, what’s wrong with requiring solid contact and some trajectory if you want to get it close?

Royal St. George’s character changes on the back nine. We’re pretty much done with the large dunes. But we get a bit of everything else—interesting rippling land, lots of bunkers, and some good flat land architecture. It starts with a bit of an oddity for a links course: the par 4 10th plays uphill to a hilltop green. Then we enter into low dune ridges that run parallel to the course and form the backbone of two of the finest par 4s that I’ve seen: the shortish 12th and the long 13th. The former doglegs right around a cluster of bunkers that creates a great diagonal drive. But the marvel of this hole is the ripples in the fairway, which is one of my favorites on any course. These ripples run down the long 13th which, in keeping with the theme of constant direction changes, doglegs left. But the ripples become softer here and create interest not so much in the fairway as in the green, where they form the primary contours. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a green that makes such great use of natural contours.

Then it gets tough. The long par 5 14th and long par 4 15th, over relatively flat land, might be the toughest consecutive holes that I’ve seen. The former is famous for the out-of-bounds right and the creek crossing the fairway in the driving zone. I thought that the most brilliant element was the layup, featuring centerline bunkers a la Woking’s 4th. There are bunkers everywhere on the 15th, pinching the fairway and crossing the front of the green, denying you an opportunity to run one on. Like the 9th, this is another one of these holes where there’s no alternative to excellent ball striking if you want to get it on the green. But even more than the 9th, there’s a decision to be made here about where to leave your approach if not going for the pin. It’s a great example of a hole where you’ll be doing damage control most of the time and the interest is in figuring out where that means you should play your shot, given the wind, firmness, etc.

I don’t think that the finishing stretch is quite up to the standard of what’s come before it, but that’s only because the middle of the back nine raises the bar so high. 16—in you’re not Thomas Björn—is a lovely par 3. 17 and 18 are fine long par 4s, the former inviting a run up shot to the wide, shallow green and the latter featuring outstanding green contouring after a tough drive.

The only quibble that I have with Royal St. George’s is about two greens, those on the 3rd and the 8th, which are two-tiered and don’t fit in with the rest of the course. That’s not surprising because these holes were built in the 1970s to replace some—apparently very quirky— blind holes that were deemed unsuitable for an Open championship course. So I guess there’s precedent for the current fad of ‘modernizations’ that have reached a recent low point at Swinley Forest. Although not bad in their own right, I’m sure that these holes don’t improve on what they replaced and probably cost the course some of its character.

Still, there’s more than enough left. Although perfectly suitable for a championship, what’s so great about Royal St. George’s is that it doesn’t appear to be trying to be a championship course. Yes, there are a few holes with a lot of bunkers, but only when the natural terrain provides less of a challenge. And Royal St. George’s doesn’t appear to be trying to be anything else either. It doesn’t remind me of another course. Hell, the holes don’t remind me of each other. This is probably one of the most remarkable, expansive pieces of land for a golf course in the world. Royal St. George’s takes full advantage of that, with the routing seeming to wander around at random, managing to take all of it in and hitting some of the most unique highlights in the world of golf in the process.

No. 3: Sunningdale—Old Course (England, UK)

There are a lot of differences between Royal St. George’s and Sunningdale’s Old Course. Royal St. George’s is on an expansive piece of linksland and poses a stern test for the best golfers in the world. Sunningdale’s Old Course is on a forested piece of heathland, often feels quite intimate, and wouldn’t pose much of a threat to the best golfers in the world (except for ladies and seniors, for whom it’s perfect).

But the one thing they have in common, and which they each have more of than probably any other course on this list, is variety. Both courses are such an incredibly varied collection of golf holes, where no hole reminds you of another on the course and many are completely original in the world of golf. If anything, the degree of variety is even more impressive here because Sunningdale’s property is more consistent and less dramatic throughout.

And one of the sources of the variety here is something that, while not uncommon for a course, is usually a negative rather than a positive: the Old is the work of two architects, Willie Park Jr. and Harry Colt. Now in many of those cases, the latter architect thoroughly revised the course, remaking it in his style (think Robert Trent Jones Sr. at Oakland Hills). But the Old is the less common case where the two styles occur alongside each other. This usually doesn’t go well (think Fazio at Inverness).

But it works brilliantly here. And that’s not because Park and Colt’s features resemble each other. They don’t. Park’s style is more minimalist, with lay-of-the-land greens, Fowler-esque earthworks dotting the landscape, and high tolerance for blindness. Colt’s approach is much more modern, with heavily shaped green complexes often benched into hillsides, diagonal lines of bunkers guarding approaches, and good sight lines.

Yet these styles are found on the parts of the property where they, respectively, fit well, creating a course that is able to do very different things in different places without loss of visual cohesion. We get the classic Colt uphill par 3s to hillside greens (4, 8) and approaches over diagonal bunker complexes to long par 4s (12). But we also get an odd blind drives (2, 11) and greens that just look like the mowed the grass down to green height (14). And then we get a few holes that combine these elements (7, 16).

All of this adds up to a course where hole after hole, you feel that you’re seeing something new and special. The rolling, forested property is very good, but not uniquely so. Yet several of these holes are just mesmerizing, with so many different types of settings. And there are a lot of surprises. There are moments when the course is giving you a certain vibe and then bam…the next hole is completely different. There are some weird moments out there, especially some of the blind shots. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a course with such an original personality. It’s about as charming as a golf course can get.

And it gets off to an incredibly fast start. The first is a short and simple par 5, but I loved its scattered mounds and lay-of-the-land green. The second is par 4 sharing some of these same features, but is extremely difficult. Both shots are semi-blind and the entryway to the shallow green is narrow between a deep bunker and heather. Like some of the holes at Royal St. George’s this one is often about damage control. It’s probably harder to make a four here than on the first.

One of the most noteworthy things about Sunningdale’s Old Course is its awesome collection of short par 4s, perhaps the best that I’ve seen. The 3rd is easily drivable but it’s important to stick to the heavily bunkered right side so that you can play into the slope of the two-tiered green, where the high tier is on the left. 9 is even more easily drivable at ~275 yards but the approach into the green is heavily bunkered and I’m not sure I’ve seen a shot where the angle is as important as if they stick the pin on the narrow shelf in the back-right over the bunker. The 11th is strange and wonderful; completely blind over a hill and bunker, with trees tightly guarding the line to the green. You can play out to the left, but this leaves a very awkward angle into the small green. I’m not sure about the virtues of the trees guarding the fairway so closely—the thick heather over there would be deterrent enough. But then again, for today’s young bomber, they’re probably what this hole needs.

Sunningdale’s two most famous holes are probably the mid-length, downhill par 4 5th and the uphill, long par 4 10th. Both, especially the latter with its large, heavily contoured green, are fine holes. But I don’t think that these two holes stand out. One hole that stood out to me was the par 4 7th. After playing two beautiful, open holes, we get to the tee here and…what the hell is this? There’s a big hill and a bunker right in front of the tee. It’s one of the strangest looking blind drives I’ve seen, completely incongruous with what we’ve seen so far. Then we crest the hill and…absolute splendor. I’ve never been so surprised on a golf course. The approach up to the Colt green is one of the prettiest I’ve seen anywhere. This was the moment, I thought, where the Old went from being a great course to a special one.

The back nine is a procession of great moments too, with great Colt long par 4 over diagonal bunkers to shelf green (12), a wonderful short par 5 over a variety of bunkers and heather-covered mounds terminating at the most beautiful, simple lay-of-the-land green, and 3 fine longer par 4s to close. I especially loved the 17th, the longest of the three closing par 4s, which, like the 8th at Pacific Dunes, favors a drive to the outside of the dogleg near a clump of trees for the best angle into green over crossing bunkers. The 18th, over crossing bunkers to a green set in front of the clubhouse and an ancient oak tree, is one of the most perfect finishing settings.

And that’s not everything that’s great about the Old. With the exception of maybe the downhill 13th, it has a fine set of par 3s, two being uphill and very recognizably Colt (4, 8) and the final being long to a relatively simple green, but with several teeing angle options that make greater or lesser trouble of the bunkers that guard the approach to the green. Really, I could go on about probably 15 of the 18 holes here. Probably the least distinctive thing about the Old, similar to other heathland courses, is the green contouring. But a few of them are big and bumpy (10, 16) and there’s so much variety in the shapes and sizes of the green complexes and the shots you’ll play into them that most won’t notice that the greens are relatively subdued.

Sunningdale’s Old Course was my favorite of the few dozen courses that I played in England. I think it deserves all of the accolades that it gets. It routinely places in the top 40 in the world and it’s easily that good. It might even deserve to be in the top 25.

Yet because it’s only about 6,650 yards and doesn’t host major men’s tournaments anymore, the Old doesn’t seem to get the attention that so many other courses of this caliber get. That’s too bad. Because I feel that the it tells a different story than the other great courses that we see regularly. They all have a bunch of great holes. But the flow of this course and its mix of holes are so wonderfully odd, so wonderfully charming. There’s something very romantic about this course. You don’t get that on the big championship courses. You don’t even get it next door on the New Course. Maybe it’s the mix of Park and Colt. I don’t know. But I do know that it makes for one of the most pleasant, original courses in the world and made for one of my favorite days on a golf course.

No. 2: Royal County Down (Northern Ireland, UK)

The top two courses on my list are, for me, both perfect 10s on the Doak scale. Royal County Down certainly receives no shortage of praise. Many well-travelled people think that it’s the best course in the world and there’s probably a near-consensus that it’s one of the world’s top 10. Certainly anyone would say that it’s in the most rarefied company with courses like Pine Valley, Augusta National, and Cypress Point.

It’s easy to heap praise on this course. One, it’s absolutely stunning. Two, the front nine is—as is universally acknowledged—one of the best stretches of golf anywhere and possibly the best nine holes on the planet. Three, several of the individual holes are obviously among the finest in the world.

But some raise critical points about Royal County Down and suggest that it’s overrated, not even the best course in Northern Ireland. One is that the greens aren’t as interesting as some of the other top courses. Another is that it’s too punishing off the tee. A third is that the back nine is greatly inferior to the front and that this takes it out of the running for being in the top of the top tier.

While I (obviously) wouldn’t consider Royal County Down to be the best course in the world and don’t know whether I’d put it in the company of Pine Valley or Cypress Point (I haven’t played them), I don’t agree with these criticisms of Royal County Down. It’s true that the green contours are tamer than a lot of great courses. But given that it is difficult off the tee—and that it’s usually windy and that the ground is usually firm—would we want highly contoured greens? Might that not make it a bit too difficult?

I also don’t concede that it’s too difficult off the tee. Yes, there are a lot of blind shots. And oh yes, if you’re driving it poorly, you’ll lose some balls. But if you’re hitting it reasonably well and playing smart (taking account of the wind, not getting too aggressive, etc.) there’s plenty of room out there to drive it. There were only 2 or 3 holes that struck me as requiring a high degree of accuracy off the tee and one of these is a short par 4 and the other is a par 5.

And I disagree with the point that the back nine is greatly inferior. Is it inferior to the front? Yes…along with possibly every other nine holes in the world. But it’s not greatly inferior. On its own, I’d still give it a 9 on the Doak scale. The long par 4 13th might be my favorite hole on the course and the 15th isn’t far behind. Hell, I probably like the back nine here as much as either nine at Royal Portrush, which both dispels the idea that it’s inferior and that Royal County Down isn’t the best in Northern Ireland.

As for the holes themselves, I could talk about every hole here, especially on the front nine. The shortish par 5 opener was my favorite in Ireland, narrowing continuously as you approach the green, which is set in a lovely hollow. The mid-length par 4 second features a blind drive and a blind approach. You need to hit one solid off the second tee (and be playing the correct set of tees) so that you can reach the widest part of the fairway. Same on 3; there are bunkers that pinch the fairway but if you’re playing the right set of tees, it isn’t hard to carry them and the fairway is quite wide beyond this. Each of the opening holes is among the finest I’ve played.

I think the long par 3 4th gets accolades mostly for its setting, with the full course and the surrounding mountains as a backdrop. But I think that it’s a great par 3 on the merits too as the green gently rises toward the back, making wide misses short better than wide misses long. I don’t think that the short par 3 7th gets the accolades it deserves. This is one of the world’s great short par 3s. And it’s great because…well for one, again, it’s very pretty…it manages to be tricky without being severe, something that’s rare for a par 3. There’s plenty of open space around this green but unless you get up into the middle of the green, your ball can come back off the front or left side. This isn’t a severe slope and you’ll have a good chance of getting your next up-and-down, but it adds a moderate element of challenge—something that’s rare for short par 3s which tend to be either too easy or too hard.

The two long par 4s that finish the front nine are in the class with 9 and 12 at Swinley Forest and 4 at Royal St. George’s. 8, which I never hear anything about, is exceptional. There’s some room off the tee but you have to be very thoughtful with the approach. You can run one in here, but you must be accurate to avoid mounds that pinch the approach about 20 yards short of the green and you must also hedge toward the front because there are nasty runoffs at both the back left and right. The only excuse I might accept for this hole not being famous is that it precedes the 9th, which is even better. So many pictures have been taken of this hole but if you put a big black curtain around it, it’d still be a great hole. The drive is blind and odd, but good execution is extremely important. That’s because you’ll need a good one to have a good shot at the green. If you’re short off the tee, it’ll be tough to get past the crossing bunkers and dunes ~30 yards short of the green. If I ever make a list of the best 10 or 18 holes I’ve ever played, this one will be on it.

I count at least 6 very good or great holes on the ‘inferior’ back nine. I thought that the long par 4 13th was the best of the bunch and I think it even rivals 9 as the best on the course. The fairway is very wide…right up until about the point where you want to hit your drive. Then it narrows between dunes. The only way to get a look at the green on the approach is to bomb it up the tight corridor on the left between these, challenging heavy gorse down the left. But the hole still works great if you have a blind approach from the right because there’s ample open space short of the green on this line to run one in. This green complex is probably the most forgiving at Royal County Down, appropriately so for a course that’s so difficult from tee-to-green.

Less forgiving is the other really great hole on the back, the long par 4 15th. The difficulty here is that the fairway narrows to almost nothing right about where you’d want to hit your drive. Still, you want to get as close to this as you can otherwise it’s a very long approach. And you’ll want the shorter approach because the green, while open and forgiving in front, has some nasty stuff at its sides, especially the deep hollow at the right side.

Another common criticism of Royal County Down is of the closing three holes. Some say 16 is a weak short par 4, 17 is bland, and that they ran out of ideas on the 18th, so they just put bunkers everywhere. I’d agree that the 17th is a bit tame but given the difficulty of the rest of the course, is this a bad thing? I disagree strongly that 16 is a weak short par 4. I thought it was excellent; drivable in the right wind off a good drive (probably the only par 4 here that is) but requiring thought about placement in a relatively narrow fairway. And I actually liked all the bunkers on 18. They force you to hit it straight which is fine given the tamer ground and good visibility from the tee. Plus it ends with a very fine push-up green.

While I can clearly go on-and-on about most of the holes here, what makes Royal County Down for me is the same thing that made Sunningdale’s Old Course and Royal St. George’s—it’s full of holes that feel completely original. Like Royal St. George’s, the dunes here are big and were likely, absent some heavy handedness by man, to result in some quirky and original holes. But unlike Royal St. George’s, which has been tamed, this course is still full throttle. Who would include all of these blind drives? Who would devise a hole like the 9th, 13th, or 15th on a blank slate? No one.

That’s one of the great advantages of having such a wild site. It creates the opportunity to build something that rises to another level. Of course you can do a bad job and either bulldoze away the character or build a course that’s unplayable and filled with stupid holes. But if you do a good job, you might create something special in the world of golf, including holes unlike anything that anyone has ever seen and which couldn’t be replicated elsewhere. And that’s what Royal County Down is. I'd be shocked if this isn't one of the world's top 10 courses and wouldn't be surprised if it's top 5.

No. 1: Pinehurst no. 2 (North Carolina, USA)

However not all great courses are the product of extraordinary properties. A smaller group of courses achieves greatness through the application of great design to more modest land. And there’s probably no better example of this—at least certainly none that I’ve seen—than Pinehurst no. 2.

By now, everyone knows the source of no. 2’s greatness—the convex green complexes surrounded by short grass, which repel balls approaching their edges, usually down 2-4 foot high slopes but sometimes down significantly higher ones. While these kinds of greens used to be uncommon, no. 2 has been very influential since it first hosted the US Open in 1999 and now you see greens on almost every new course in this style.

When I first played here in 2002, I was amazed by the fact that a concept that I found so simple yet so interesting hadn’t been copied elsewhere. Now almost 25 years later, having seen many of these newer courses as well as no. 2 for a second time (in 2019), I’m perhaps even more amazed because while many have tried, none that I’ve seen have succeeded in building Pinehurst no. 2 style greens. To be fair, most courses don’t use this concept throughout like no. 2 does. But of those that do use it, few get it right. One of the best examples that I’ve seen is next door on Pinehurst no. 4, where Gil Hanse managed to get some of the edges of his greens looking very similar to what you find here. But many of these runoffs on newer courses are overdone, with the slopes around the greens being too high and carrying balls too far away from the green.

What’s the secret sauce of Pinehurst no. 2’s green complexes? It’s that while there are severe runoffs around parts of many of these greens, most of the runoffs aren’t that severe. Often the slope at the edge of the green will just be 2 or 3 feet high and carry your ball only 10 or 12 feet away from the green’s edge. Sometimes it’s even less than that. That means that it’s difficult to hit the greens and that something coming in hot can get away from you but—and this is critical—getting up and down is very doable, provided that you miss in the right place. More than any other course that I’ve played, Pinehurst no. 2 places a premium on missing in the right place. If you miss over the 8th green, you’re much more likely to knocked the ball one-handed over the other side of the green as it rolls back to your feet (like John Daly did in 1999) than get up-and-down (like Bryson did in 2024).

​And because the greens have such strongly defined good and bad misses, Pinehurst no. 2 puts an extraordinary premium on thinking and discipline. Every green gives you ample room to miss—usually at least a quarter of the space around each green will leave a very playable next shot and on almost every hole, some of that space is at the front. But you have to identify it and have the discipline to hedge over there if you have a shot that you’re less than fully confident about. If you’re hitting your irons well or have a favorable shot, you can certainly take several pins on, but then the premium is on execution.

At the other end of the spectrum—as I’ve seen first hand—weaker players can get around here by playing conservatively and aiming at the open areas at the front of the greens. Although equity may be a bad word these days, there isn’t a course that I’ve seen that does more to equalize outcomes, giving the weaker player room to play (they never lose a ball in the pine straw) yet being extremely testing for the good player. This is an extremely appealing quality in a golf course and one that’s very hard to achieve. It’s much easier to build something that achieves the opposite—impossible for the weaker player but easy for the plus handicap (look no further than a few miles up the road to Tobacco Road for an example of this).

The other noteworthy thing about Pinehurst no. 2 was the restoration undertaken by Coore and Crenshaw in the early 2010s. They tore out all the bermuda rough and irrigation lining the fairways and restored these areas to the native sand, wire grass, pine needles, and Longleaf Pine saplings (which look like wire grass). But while this has made the course look significantly better, I found that it didn’t affect the course in a fundamental way. I didn’t think it was a significantly better course after the restoration because what makes the course great—the greens—was left unchanged. A few holes, notably the 7th and the 18th, were improved by the shifted fairway lines but this had less of an impact on my impression of the course that I thought it would.

Like Sunningdale—Old and Royal County Down, a notable holes list of no. 2 would include almost every hole. There are no bad holes here. The weakest hole here is probably better than the two or three weakest holes on every other course on this list. But I’ve also heard that there are few or no great holes here and that’s just wrong. There are at least half-a-dozen holes (1, 2, 5, 8, 14, 18) that are among the finest that I’ve played.

The opening five holes are clearly the best opening stretch that I’ve played. The mid-length par 4 1st, with subtle runoffs and the back and right of its green and steeper one in the front is my favorite opening hole. It’s just so innocuous looking from the tee. Then you’re in the fairway staring at the green…and it looks impossible to hit. Then you get up there and realize that slope in front of the green isn’t so bad. And the long par 4 2nd, for all the carnage that it’s caused in US Opens, doesn’t even look that dangerous from the fairway. And it isn’t, provided that you play to the front-left part of the green. This is a difficult thing to get yourself to do if you’re a good player and the pin is in the back-right. But if you’re looking to shoot a good score, it’s the smart thing to do.

3 is a fine shorter par 4 and the long 4th, which used to be a par 5, makes a terrific long par 4. But the next best hole in the opening stretch is clearly the par 5 5th. This used to be a long par 4 and it was a classic, so I was a bit concerned about how being converted into a par 5 would affect it. It made the hole better. And this is because it brought all the bunkers between the tee and green back into play. Now rather than sailing over the corner of the dogleg, you have to negotiate the bunker at the corner. And now the carry bunkers on the great approach to the green all come into play because you have to negotiate them with the layup. Plus the green, which is quite narrow and tough to hit, works much better for a par 5.

The rest of the front nine is not quite as strong. The two par 3s are quite severe—the 6th green is too severely sloped and 9 might be the hole with the fewest decent options for missing around the green. But the par 4 7th was significantly improved by shifting the bunkers and widening the mowing line at the corner of the dogleg. And the par 5 8th (par 4 for the Open) remains one of the world’s great holes of its length, with an interested tilted fairway and a fantastic green that offers ample opportunity for both security and ruin.

The back nine starts with one of the toughest par 5s anywhere followed by two long, but otherwise modest par 4s. The fairway really zigzags in the layup area on 10, making this one of the tougher layups on a par 5. 11 and 12 are very flat and have two of the simpler greens. But the next two holes turn things up again, with the short par 4 13th requiring good distance control to its hilltop green (you cannot be long). The long par 4 14th is another of my favorite holes, having one of the best greens on no. 2. It’s deep and a miss in the front-left quadrant leaves a simple pitch. But the deeper you go into the green, the more dangerous a miss wide becomes with a miss over the green challenging long on 8 as the worst spot on the course.

All of the closing holes are very good but the par 3 15th and the finisher stand out. The green on the former looks impossible to hit from the tee—it looks like you’re trying to land one on the top of a globe. And it might not be much easier to hit. But at the front or front-left won’t leave too hard a second. The par 4 18th is another hole that I think was improved by the removal of rough and a shifting of the mowing lines. The big right fairway bunker used to hover in the rough. But the fairway has been shifted right and now a drive over its edge will be in the fairway (Payne Stewart could have used the new mowing lines in 1999 when he was in the rough here by a foot).

Pinehurst no. 2 shows what great golf course design can achieve. I know that there’s an argument that the greens have evolved significantly from what Donald Ross built here and that the edges of these are now much more severe. And if that’s true, maybe the course is indicative more of the triumph of evolution than design.

But however no. 2 got here, where it is now is among the small handful of best golf courses in the world. And it didn’t get there by being on spectacular land like Royal County Down or Royal St. George’s. It got there by what’s been built into—or evolved on—what's really quite modest land. And that, however it got there, is extraordinary. No course I’ve seen has a better design concept. No course is so testing for great players yet so playable for lesser golfers. No course makes everyone think more about what they should be trying to do. And a further incredible thing is that the powers-that-be are convinced that it’s a concept that’s build to last for great players—the USGA has scheduled a US Open here about every 6 years for the next 30 or 40.

I think that I agree with them. Although there’s a ball roll back that’s supposed to happen in a few years, I think that if any course was going to continue to be able to stand up to the best players in the world, it’d be this one. And that’s because no course is better at exploiting the confidence of the good player. Sure that pin is gettable—you’re one of the best players in the world and you’re hitting your irons well. But you miss that one just a little. Oops, now you’re down the worst side of the green and you’ll be lucky to make a 5. While the execution—thinking balance in playing great golf is probably 90-10 most of the time, it’s probably more like 70-30 at Pinehurst no. 2.

Pinehurst no. 2 may not be the prettiest course to look at and it may not have the most dramatic collection of holes, but it is the best golf examination across skill levels of any course that I’ve seen. And it is the best course that I've seen.

No. 10: Swinley Forest (England, UK)

One of the puzzling developments in golf course architecture in recent years is the divergence in treatment of classic courses in the US and the UK. While any American club with some money and architectural pedigree (and some without the latter) is restoring (or ‘restoring’) their course to its original design, many clubs with classic courses in the UK are modernizing their courses, with new bunkering styles and hole redesigns.

We already encountered one such course, Stoneham (no. 33) in the south of England. But a much more prominent example is Swinley Forest, a very private club with a small—and apparently very elite—membership in the middle of Surrey’s famous heathland belt. This course has long been highly regarded but like some of its neighbors, its reputation has only grown in recent years. It appears to have become close to settled consensus that this is one of the top three heathland courses in the country. While I haven’t seen the contenders outside of London (i.e. Woodhall Spa), I think I saw all the London area ones. And there was indeed little doubt to me that Swinley Forest was top 3 in this set.

Which is why it’s so puzzling that since my visit, the club appears to have made significant changes to the course. Some of the changes were underway at the time of my visit—reshaping bunkers, removing Rhododendrons, adding heather-covered mounds. And some of these changes—namely removing the Rhododendrons—were good. But I didn’t like the heather-covered mounds that had been added throughout the course. I appreciate the desire to add heather on a heathland course, but it’s penal and some of these clubs are getting carried away with the amount that they’re adding. And I thought that the mounding was poorly done, better suited to a Michigan public course than a Colt masterpiece.

Since my visit, several more significant and disturbing changes appear to have been made, namely a complete reshaping of the green surrounds on the 7th and 17th. The pictures that I’ve seen make it look like they completely ruined both, adding heather-covered mounds around the former and smoothing out the shaping on the latter, making it look like something by Rees Jones. Whoever directed these changes should be banned from having any association with the game of golf for the rest of eternity. At Stoneham, the alterations to the bunkers were a mixed bag, with some looking good and others not so much. Here, almost all of the changes to the design appear to be negative. I simply don’t understand what the people in charge here were thinking.

So it’s with a bit of a heavy heart that I write about a Swinley Forest that no longer exists, one that as Colt’s ‘least bad’ course never should have had any design changes, save for maybe adding a few back tees. My day here in the summer of 2018 was one of my most memorable. It was a hot and dry summer in southeastern England and because British courses don’t irrigate their fairways, every course I played was baked out, brown,…and perfect.

Swinley actually gets off to a pretty slow start, with three shorter par 4s that, with the exception of the blind drive on 2, aren’t too interesting. The famous long, uphill par 3 4th certainly changes that. I’m not sure I agree with those who count it among the world’s best par 3s, but it’s certainly very pretty…and very difficult. The other noteworthy feature in the modest opening stretch was the green complex on the long par 4 6th. This green, which lays so simply on the land, is one of Colt’s most beautiful.

And then, the course takes off like a rocket ship. I loved the uphill par 4 7th, with its blind approach over a bunker well short of the green. To me, this was one of the world’s great approach shots—very difficult, but with plenty of safe space short and left. I thought the green, like on 6, was another masterpiece of subtlety, perfectly balancing the difficult rest of the hole. Sadly, that green complex has been ruined and the balance lost.

I count a lot of long par 4s among my favorite holes—the 2nd at Pinehurst no. 2, the 13th on Pacific Dunes, most of the holes on the back nine at Rye—but I’m not sure that there are two better long par 4s in the world than 9 and 12 at Swinley Forest. If you don’t carry the fairway bunker up the left side on 9, you can run through the fairway into heather-covered ridges. 12 is similar, requiring either a draw or something that hugs the tree line closely to avoid running through the fairway. The approach to 9 reminds me of the approach to the great 5th at Pinehurst no. 2. And the approach to 12 reminds me of nothing, at least on an inland course. The heaving contours leading into the green were probably most reminiscent of those leading into the green on the great 3rd at Royal Cinque Ports.

Sandwiched between these are two other great holes—a perfectly designed long par 3 with a carry bunker short and the rest of the trouble at the sides and a quirky short par 4 with a blind, uphill drive into tight space. Some might find the latter a bit awkward but I thought it worked great—you can avoid the narrowest of the space by laying back less than 225. Or you can go for the green, with a heathery sea of death left but just enough room short and right of the green.

The run home is not quite the equal of the middle stretch, but that’s like a bit like saying Peyton Manning wasn’t Tom Brady. The par 4 14th is one of the prettiest, simple holes that I’ve seen, with an approach across some proper Colt mounding to another perfect, simple green. 15 is a short par 5 with a great uphill second shot that narrows the closer you get and ruthlessly rejects shots that come up short. I thought 16, with its narrow, heather-lined fairway and narrow, two-tiered green was one of the hardest par 4s I had ever played. And the par 3 17th, with its small, perched green that dropped off steeply in every direction, wasn’t much easier (fortunately those in charge a few years back have saved us from that…). The course finishes with another tough par 4, one which appears to have been helped by the addition of back tees, one of few good changes here. Now it takes a solid drive to carry the creek and an accurate one to fit between it and the bunker on the left.

​There’s no doubt that the version of Swinley Forest that I saw was worthy of its accolades. Although you might have wondered what was supposed to be so special after the first few holes, you certainly wouldn’t have felt that when standing on the 13th tee. Because of its reputation for exclusivity, I was reluctant to try to play here and it was a bit of a challenge to arrange. But I’m so glad that I did. It was one of the most idyllic, serene days of golf I’ve ever experienced (I saw maybe 5 other people on the course in 36 holes). Given that as well as the changes that have been made, this is one course on my list that I might be just fine never seeing again.

No. 9: West Sussex (England, UK)

Rounding out the trio of aristocratic southeastern England clubs is perhaps the least heralded, West Sussex. While it gets significant praise from almost all who have played it, I don’t think it draws the attention or visits of places like Sunningdale or Walton Heath because it’s quite private and is significantly further away from London—probably an hour-and-a-half by train. That’s too bad because to me, it was the second-best of the London heathland courses and should make lists of top 100 courses in the world with room to spare. But I rarely see it on these lists while the New at Sunningdale, Swinley Forest, and St. George’s Hill have become fixtures.

Ok, so what makes this course so great? The one thing that doesn’t—probably the only thing that keeps this course in my mind from being a top 25 world contender—is the greens contouring, which is not very interesting even by London heathland standards. Everything else does. Pleasant land, a lot of heather, great variety of holes with an especially good mix of stern holes and quirk. And great bunkering; this is possibly the best-bunkered course that I’ve seen. They’re brilliantly placed, superbly shaped, blending in perfectly with their surroundings, and feature beautiful, white sand that is apparently native to the region. Noteworthy in particular is the fairway bunkering, which is the best I saw on any course in the UK or Ireland and helps make this course possibly the best test of driving that I’ve seen.

I think that many considered the short par 5 1st—which, like at Rye, is the course’s only par 5—to be one of the course’s real weaknesses. It probably was 25 years ago when the historical imagery on Google Earth shows that it had no bunkering in the driving zone. Now it does—two bunkers on the left narrowing the fairway at just the right distance, about 275 yards, which adds a good driving challenge to the superb approach, running between two bunkers. Apparently these and other fairway bunkers have been added or moved by architect Donald Steel, who’s a member of the club. So at least English courses aren’t batting a 0 with their recent renovations.

The next 6 holes are simply outstanding. They consist of 4 par 4s, each of which is an outstanding driving hole, but in very different ways, and 2 world-class par 3s. The 2nd has a bunkerless fairway but the heather continuously encroaches on the right, bringing the fairway to its narrowest point just where you want to drive it. The shorter 3rd features a complex of bunkers up the right that guards the best angle into the narrow green. Both the 4th and the 7th feature poor visibility and dogleg left, favoring draws, but the 7th is significantly uphill over a great top-shot bunker. And the back-to-back par 3s nos. 5 and 6 have been mentioned as England’s equivalents to the famous 15th and 16th at Cypress Point. They’re probably as close as you could get on an inland course. The 5th is a perfect setting and the 6th is unique among long par 3s that I’ve played, featuring an entire fairway short and right as if it were a short par 4 but a very deep, narrow green that becomes quite tough to hit for those who use it.

While the two finishers on the front nine aren’t anything special, the back nine is consistently world-class, with one great driving hole after another, each again with its own character. They require a draw around a nasty bunker complex and trees (10), a long carry over bunkers right or a fade into a slope to avoid heather on the left (11), a shot placed near a bunker at the outside of the dogleg to set up an angle and a flat lie (13), another blind, uphill drive over heather to a narrowing fairway (16), and a fairway that snakes around bunkers right then left (17).

Yet even that underplays the interest and variety in these drives because the mix of elements and contour of the land works differently on each. The land slopes right-to-left on both 10 and 13, but you want to hit a draw with it on the former and a fade into it on the latter. 11 plays gently uphill and 16 more steeply so, but 14 is downhill and the final two holes are relatively flat. Bunkers dictate play on most of these drives, except on the long, downhill 14th and the blind, uphill 16th.

I mentioned that the green surfaces here aren’t too memorable. But the green complexes are, especially in their variety. The bunkering around the greens is no less attractive or well thought-out than that around the fairways. And the mix of elements around the greens is also excellent including several greens that are relatively open in front, some with diagonal bunkering (17), some fronted by sand (5, 13), one fronted by heather-covered mounds (16), and a few ponds (6, 14, 15).

​All-in-all, West Sussex comes off as one of the most thoroughly, thoughtfully designed courses that I’ve seen. The bunkering is near-perfect. And the heather helps a lot—it’s probably more plentiful here than on any other heathland course and contributes significantly to the interest and challenge on both the drives and approaches. Combine a great course with perfect conditions (again, in the dry summer of 2018) and a perfect day and this was one of the most enjoyable experiences that I’ve ever had on a golf course. Hopefully this course starts to get more recognition as the world class course that it is.

No. 8: Cabot Links (Nova Scotia, Canada)

Courses like Swinley Forest and West Sussex have a hard-to-describe charm that you rarely find on modern courses. They have a lot of little quirks—some oddly placed mound or bunker, some detail in the contour of the land, and/or some ways that the features blend in with the background—that don’t look quite like anything you’ve seen on other course and which give the course a uniqueness and sense of place.

Of all the modern courses that I’ve seen, Cabot Links might come closest to achieving this charm and sense of place that you find on the classic old courses. So many of the modern courses try really hard to make their greatness known to you through big, flashy bunkers and heavily contoured greens set against vast landscapes. But Cabot Links paints in more subtle brushstrokes—a gentle slope off the edge of the green, a small, sandy mound in the fairway, a green set against the backdrop of a port for fishing boats. The landscape certainly has the drama of the modern courses, set in rolling land and sand dunes along the coastline. Yet architect Rod Whitman’s course emphasizes details over drama, giving this course a feel that I found completely unique among modern courses and which, I think, makes it one of the absolute best among them.

The 1st hole sold me on this course straight-away. Few would place among the course’s best holes, but it demonstrates all of the strengths that, as we will come to learn, are commonplace here. The drive doesn’t look like much but if you don’t keep it near the bunker on the left, you have an awkward angle from which to fit your second between two bunkers that pinch the layup area. The view from here to the green is classic links and the subtle shaping around the green reminded me of Colt’s best work at Swinley Forest. And this probably isn’t even one of the 4 or 5 best holes.

The rest of the front nine is just brilliant, with great variety in the types of shots you’ll have to play, the degree of challenge, and several poetic touches and landscapes. One of these touches is the mound in the left side of the 3rd fairway, reminiscent of a Fowler earthwork at Walton Heath. It forces you either to lay back, thread the gap between it and marsh on the right, or go for a carry which, it you don’t keep it near the marsh, leaves an awkward angle. The 4th is one of the sternest par 4s you’ll ever see, uphill with staggered fairway bunkers and a diagonal line protecting the green on the right.

Then we get two completely different landscape treatments on 5 and 6, the former a par 3 with a beautiful fall-away green that looks like it’s playing out into the great Canadian wilderness and the latter just one of the most perfect settings for a golf hole you’ll ever see, doglegging left around a lake with a small fishing boat port as the back drop to the green. We return to the coastline links setting for the par 3 7th, which alone would earn this course the ‘Links’ in its name and which, again, features brilliant, subtle green side shaping. And even after all that, the par 5 8th might be the best of the bunch. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen hole where the shaping of the green so strongly dictates how you should play the previous shots. The right side is the safe side on the approach and there’s ample room there. But there’s also a spine that runs down the length of the green at its right side and it’s extremely difficult to hit the area of the green left of it (where most of the pin placements are), unless you’ve played the hole down its more dangerous left side.

The middle holes 9 and 10 have their fans (and the 9th has a brilliantly contoured green) but for me, the course takes a bit of a break in its middle section except for the 11th, which is another brilliant (and long) par 5. The drive is awkward over the crest of a hill because we can see that the land slopes right and we’re not sure if we’ll run out of room. But the layup is one of the best I’ve seen—hit the precipice on the right and you’ll have a shorter shot and clear look at the green. Play left up the safe side and you’ll face a blind third, unless you can get it almost all the way to the green.

But we get a big finish starting at the 14th. The first part of the big finish is actually very small—a 90 yard par 3 that plays downhill to a big green on the coastline. It looks a bit pitch-and-putt…until you’re standing there and the wind is blowing 20 mph. left-to-right. So that’s why the green is so big! 15 and 16 are great long par 4s, worthy of their coastline acreage. 15 is an especially exacting hole requiring—like no. 8—placement up the dangerous left side to leave a good angle to a deep, skinny green. I found the short, uphill par 3 17th to be another poetic touch, reminding me of a great English par 3 on one hand but having a sense of place all its own with its surroundings of stunted spruce trees. And the long par 4 18th—this just may be the best finishing hole that I’ve played. I love the uphill drive. I love the contouring around the green. And speaking of sense of place, the proximity of the restaurant to the green reminded me of the clubhouse patio behind the 14th green at Woking, another of the great scenes in golf.

​Cabot Links has been on a lot of world top 100 lists, but it’s almost always near the bottom and always behind its sister, Cabot Cliffs. I thought it was clearly the superior of the two courses and that its place on a world top 100 list should be in no doubt. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a world top 50 course.

No. 7: Royal Portrush—Dunluce Course (Northern Ireland, UK)

Now here’s a course that everyone thinks is in the top 50 in the world. I think there’s even a significant contingent that thinks it’s top 20 or even top 10. The bigger question about Royal Portrush seems to be: is it better than Royal County Down? A course that some people think is no. 1 in the world?

If anything, I think the debate around this has become stronger as Royal Portrush after hosted the highly successful Open Championship in 2019. But—at risk of pouring an ice bucket on that big buildup—while Royal Portrush is a great course and, for reasons I’ll explain, especially well-suited to hosting big tournaments among the great courses that I’ve played, I don’t think there can be much of a debate that Royal County Down is the superior course. While this course is very sound, presents an excellent test of driving, and has several great holes, Royal Country Down is almost otherworldly in both its number of great holes and their uniqueness. Royal Portrush is not as spectacular, nor does it have the oddness that gives County Down its charm.

Of course, there can’t be more than a small handful of courses that withstand comparison to Royal County Down so it’s pretty unfair to compare any course to it. Royal Portrush is undoubtedly a great course, certainly among the 50 greatest in the world, so it deserves its own spotlight. To me, Royal Portrush is a great course because it’s such a great test of golf. It puts a lot of demand on driving, but the challenge is different from hole-to-hole because there’s great variety in how the holes fall across this hilly dunescape and in the fairway bunker schemes. The green complexes are an excellent set, not so much for the surface contours (although a few are outstanding) but for the shaping at and around their edges. I’ve always heard that Royal Portrush was one of the best-designed of the big links courses, not surprising given its Colt pedigree. And I certainly agree with that.

As with Cabot Links, we get a good sense of what makes this course great right in the beginning. Actually, the out-of-bounds lining both sides of the fairway of the 1st that took Rory McIlroy out of the 2019 Open before he even got started, is not indicative for this course. But the exacting uphill approach is. And so are both the great drive doglegging left around bunkers and the approach between several bunkers culminating at a green complex with terrific shaping on its left side on the par 5 2nd. This is definitely one of the best two hole opening stretches that I’ve seen.

And they’re just a warm-up for what I think is the highlight of the course, the par 4s nos. 4 and 5. These must be among the world’s best longer and shorter par 4s. 4 is among the small handful of the world’s best driving holes, with a fairway that narrows between two bunkers left and an out-of-bounds hedge right. The approach, to a green set in the dunes past two bunkers that challenge any second following a poor drive, is about as good. The famous par 4 5th, playing downhill to a green set on the coastline, is one of those holes that should be great regardless of the wind. It’s drivable if the wind is behind but the fairway is angled and largely blind, creating a tough decision about which line to pick if the wind is less favorable. The green is also one of Colt’s best.

After the opening 6, Portrush gets into a bit of a groove with about a 9 hole stretch that’s solid and testing but not, with the exception of the 10th green and the maybe the 14th (for sheer difficulty), all that special. 7 and 8 are new holes in dunes on land stolen from the neighboring Valley Course. I get why they did this—the land is stunning and the two holes that they replaced were on the course’s flattest land near the clubhouse. But the par 5 7th is a bit of a dumb blonde and the 8th is, if anything, too exacting off the tee, requiring a tight fit between some nasty sand dunes on the left and bunkers right.

But one thing that I do appreciate about this stretch of holes—all longer holes with the exception of the par 3 13th—is the variety of driving challenges that they pose. Some bend left (8, 9), some bend right (10). There are a few reverse camber fairways (9, 10), requiring well-shaped drives. You can bomb away to try to carry the junk up the right on 11, or hit a running fade up the left to try to catch the downslope. And you must be very accurate to fit into tight space on the straight 12th and 14th. Plus, there’s some fine shaping around some of these greens. This is really a case of a stretch of holes being more than the sum of its parts—I think I’d only try to make the case for 10 as a great hole, but each one contributes something to the mix. This section of the course made me think that Portrush would make a terrific US Open course if it were in the United States.

​Portrush does turn the dial up again at the finish, with two more of the better holes in the world—the medium-long par 4 15th and the world-famous par 3 16th ‘Calamity’—and a very interesting, sometimes drivable short par 4 17th. 15 didn’t strike me when I was watching the Open but it definitely did in person. The uphill drive to a fairway that turns left but slopes gently right is one of the best I’ve ever seen and the green has brilliant contouring at its right edge. Calamity is great as advertised, but I didn’t appreciate it until I saw it how the cautious but accurate player can use dunes short-left of the green to bypass the famous pit and get their ball on the green. And the grass is so hacked up in the pit that shots down there are playable too. 17 is a bit unusual for a links course, with a fairway that drops downhill to the green. But like 5, it works well in different winds—drivable when downwind and narrow and exacting when into it.

I didn’t feel such a strong affection for Royal Portrush either when I was playing or when I was writing my initial review as I did for other courses in this part of my list. But I did recognize its strengths and going back through my pictures now and seeing how good the shaping at the edges of greens is in addition to what I already thought about the course’s virtues off the tee is making me think that I might feel a little more affection for it if I played it again. In any case, there can be no doubt of the course’s greatness or its virtues as a test of golf.

No. 6: Bandon Trails (Oregon, US)

I’ve seen one other modern course which could compete with Cabot Links in creating a sense of place and charm and it’s Coore and Crenshaw’s Bandon Trails, the third course at the resort. Apparently Mike Kaiser was reluctant to offer Coore and Crenshaw the task of designing this course because its property is mostly in the forest, with only a small section in the sand dunes. If anything, the property is, to me, Bandon Trails’ great strength; it gives the resort some landscape variety and sacrifices nothing in topographical interest. This is a very interesting piece of land. Oh, and the forest is one of the most beautiful through which you’ll ever see a golf course routed. To my liking, this is one of the most beautiful courses that I’ve ever seen.

While Coore and Crenshaw’s routing and design features deserve some of the credit for this course’s charm and sense of place, there are a lot of natural details in the site, especially in its vegetation, that contribute to the course’s feel and aesthetic success. The trees are of incredible variety, with many stunted, very cool looking trees near the sand dunes and very tall Spruces, Douglas Firs, and Hemlocks that give the interior holes a dark, epic look. There are beautiful shrubs of all shapes and sizes lining the holes throughout that give many of the holes an aesthetic depth that you rarely see, especially on a relatively new course. There were several times throughout the round where I felt like I was in a huge Japanese garden—everything here is so harmonious.

But so much of the credit for how well this course fits in with its landscape must go to Coore and Crenshaw. First of all, I love how the routing takes us on a journey through different the parts of the property. We start in the dunes, then get a mix of forest and dunes, then get some different types of forest settings, before emerging back out into the dunes for the finish. This creates a variety of holes and a flow between them that’s simply outstanding. And the shaped features blend in so well with the surroundings. The bunkers often just look like part of the landscape, even in the forested holes, with their edges disappearing into the surrounding vegetation. Same with shaping of the green complexes and margins of the holes, which is some of the most deft I’ve seen anywhere. It just might be the best example of a golf course as a work of landscape architecture that I’ve seen.

Ok, so clearly I think there’s some poetry in this course too. What about the holes? They’re almost universally outstanding and a few stand out as among the best on any course that I’ve seen. The course’s opening stretch counts a few among these, namely the long par 3 2nd and the par 4 4th. The former is one of the toughest par 3s that I’ve seen, playing down hill with a green surrounded by dunes (right) and forest) left. But while it’s tough to see, there’s ample room short and left of the green. So it’s a great example of the classic design where the deeper you try to get it into the green, the more risk you incur. The dogleg-right 4th is one of the world’s greatest driving holes, with a diagonal ridge running through fairway toward the green. If you play to the fat side of the fairway left, you’ll have a long second or your drive can even kick forward into the junk. The carry up the right is tough and if you don’t make it, you’ll have a blind approach. But if you do, you’ll have a clear view into one of the most perfectly set green complexes that I’ve ever seen.

​The rest of the front nine has incredible variety including a short par 3 that plays uphill to one of the wildest greens on the course (no. 5), a very long par 4 with a massive diagonal driving bunker and a hilltop green with a severe false front (no. 7), and a drivable par 4 into very tight quarters with another heavily contoured green. But my favorite hole of this bunch might have been one that most would not consider among the course’s best: the long par 5 9th. The drive isn’t so interesting but I thought that it had one of the best layup shots that I’ve seen on a par 5. Bunkers encroach on the left starting about 150 yards from the green and just past this, the forest encroaches progressively on the right. If you want to get within 100 yards of the green for your third, you have to take on some risk with the second.

The first half of the back nine had two holes that really stood out to me: the long par 4 11th and the mid-length par 4 13th. The drive on the former is wide open, except for the mess of bunkers up the right side that are clearly tempting you to try to hug/carry them. That’s a good thing to be able to do because the approach will be quite long if you play out to the left and there’s a lot of danger in the form of a bunker short-left and a pond right. Having grown up in southeastern Michigan, I’ve seen many green side ponds. This is probably the most beautiful one that I’ve seen. But it’s also right near the top of the list of great pond holes because your long approach will probably be running in and you need to be careful of the line. That bunker left is just where you’d want to land it! The 13th is one of the better driving holes that I’ve seen, winding left around a bunker and a forest right that’s closer than it appears. You either need to hug the line of the bunker tight or hit a pretty good draw. Wherever you hit it, make sure to have a look through those woods on the right—I probably found about $60 of new Pro-V1s and TP-5 in a less than 5 minute search! You could pay for a good chunk of your trip in these woods.

Of course the hole that everyone knows at Bandon Trails is the short par 4 14th uphill to a skinny green. They must have really softened this green over the years because I didn’t find anything controversial about it—and I’m always complaining about severe runoffs around modern greens. Although solid, I’m not sure that the rest of the finishing stretch is the course’s strength with the exception of the famous par 3 17th, which is always featured in the resort’s promotional material. It’s a tough green to hit with its big false front and bunkers tight to its sides. But its greatest virtue is its perfectly landscaped setting. They don’t always get it right, but the PR people certainly chose a good hole to represent this place.

​I think Bandon Trails continues to make most world top 100 lists, but it’s usually near the bottom. I don’t know why. I’d bet that this is a world top 40 or 50 course. There are no weak holes, several world class ones, and it’s just a beautiful work of landscape architecture. I haven’t seen Sand Hills or Friar’s Head, but this was easily the best of the 6 or 8 Coore-Crenshaw courses that I have seen. And it seems like the consensus at Bandon is that it’s one of the top two courses there. Many think it’s the best. I can certainly understand that. Really, it’s hard to come up with arguments against this course. And given how beautiful it is, how perfect the details and the finishing are, I’m not sure why anyone would want to try.

No. 20: Whistling Straits—Straits Course (Wisconsin, USA)​

Whistling Straits is, of course, the other big golf destination in Wisconsin besides Sand Valley. But the Straits Course, site of 3 PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup, could hardly be more different from Mammoth Dunes. You’ll get some bounces here too but this time, most of them will probably be unfavorable. And all of the fairways have been narrowed from their original margins, meaning that you have to drive the ball pretty straight to hit them. So this is a tough course, although that’s probably what we should expect for a course that regularly hosts men’s major championships.

The Straits Course has an interesting routing, with the opening holes and closing holes on each nine playing respectively to and from the Lake Michigan shoreline and the rest of the holes on each nine running south and north, clockwise and counterclockwise respectively along the lakeshore. This means that there are a lot of holes with lake frontage and Pete Dye did a good job bringing variety to these. All 4 of the par 3’s play along the lakeshore, yet Dye managed to make four holes that play very different from each other. And both the long par 4 4th and the par 4 13th, with its approach playing downhill to a green that looks like it’s floating above the lake, are excellent.

There are some good holes in the interior too. Three of the par 5’s, nos. 2, 11, and 16 are very good although the approaches on 2 and 16 feel a bit similar. And while tough as hell, I liked the long par 4 15th, which has a beautiful, open approach allowing you to run the ball onto the green.

That’s a lot of very good holes. So then why isn’t this course higher on my list? Like a few other courses on this list, the Straits is a course where a lot of good is offset by some serious bad. The infamous par 5 5th is simply horrible, possibly the worst hole on any course that I’ve reviewed. During the Ryder Cup, several guys laid up into the water, which astonished me. Then when I played the hole, I realized that on that second shot, you have no idea where anything is on any line. So I understood how you could lay up into the pond. The short par 4 6th, where you’ll often have a blind approach to a silly, glasses-shaped green where no one but the pros can hit the small right section that has no bailout, isn’t so far behind. 18 has also been very controversial over the years with its awkward drive and huge, amorphously shaped green, but has been improved though tweaking to the fairway and green over the years. It could probably use some more.

So like Greywalls and the Blackwolf Run River Course, this one is a mixed bag. I think there are fewer weaknesses here than on those courses and more excellent holes. But this is another course in this section of my list that I think is overrated. It’s still pretty high up most world top 100 lists. I’m pretty sure that if I had seen all of the contenders, it wouldn’t make mine.

No. 19: Royal Cinque Ports (England, UK)

The next few courses are the section of my list where I think we start to transition from 7 to 8 on the Doak Scale. First, Royal Cinque Ports (aka ‘Deal’), a much lesser known—but beloved among many of those who know it—links course just down the road from Royal St. George’s. This course gets some significant praise from many who have seen a lot of great links courses. And it isn’t hard to understand why—it’s an excellent piece of property and there are some standout holes and features.

Let’s start with the positives. Two par 5’s, nos. 3 and 16, would be on my list of the greatest holes in the world. Each has been changed somewhat since my visit in 2016, with the angle of the drive on the 3rd being shifted to the left and a high layup fairway—supposedly from the original design—being added on the 16th. Neither of these changes would detract significantly however from the holes’ principal strengths—their all-world greens. The randomly bumpy 16th green might be my favorite so far in the world. The last 150 yards into the 3rd green, across wild fairway ripples, was one of my favorite walks in golf.

Other holes and features stand out too, mostly on the much tougher back nine. The long par 4 12th, with its half-pipe-shaped green. The long par 3 14th with an open front but trouble at the sides. The 15th and 17th, with their wild, rolling fairways that blend seamlessly into their greens. In general, this course has one of the best sets of green complexes in southern England.

But I wouldn’t quite put Royal Cinque Ports in the top tier of links courses. In what’s become a bit of a trend on this list, the middle section of the course, holes 9-11, is solid, but nothing special. I’m also not as big on the short par 4 6th with its awkward elevated green as others seem to be. And in general, other than the holes and features that I’ve mentioned above, the remaining holes are mostly good, but nothing too special. Still, a lot of these are quite stern tests of golf, like the 7th with its heavily bunkered fairway and the long par 4 18th, with its second shot over the burn. And there are no poor holes.

Back in the day, Royal Cinque Ports used to host Open Championships. I’m not sure why it doesn’t still. Like Portmarnock, it has all the hallmarks of an excellent championship test, plus a good deal of charm. I guess part of it might be that it’s only about 10 minutes away from Royal St. George’s. But that’s the only Open Championship venue in southeastern England, by far the most populous part of the country. Surely they could use a second venue in this region. And not only is Royal Cinque Ports the most suitable second venue here, it’d be a worthy venue anywhere in the UK.

No. 18: St. Patrick’s Links (Republic of Ireland)

Tom Doak’s St. Patrick’s Links at the Rosapenna Resort in Donegal, Ireland was not too far behind Royal County Down and Royal Portrush as courses I most wanted to see on my 2023 Ireland trip. The course wanders through an awesome, expansive piece of dunesland that was the site of a defunct Jack Nicklaus course. Early word of mouth on St. Patrick’s Links was excellent and since its opening, the course has placed in the middle of several world top 100 lists.

I expected to be blown away. Unfortunately, I was not. But it’s a bit hard for me to explain why not. There are so many positives. The land is excellent. The greens are among the best I’ve seen by Doak; very interesting, in some cases highly original and, I don’t think, ever over the top. And there are several excellent holes. So why doesn’t that add up to what I think would be a top 50 or 60 course in the world?

One of the issues is that I didn’t find it very interesting off the tee. There was little wind in my morning round and I thought that it was just designed to be played in heavier wind. But the wind was blowing pretty good in the afternoon and I still found a good chunk of the holes pretty uninteresting off the tee. To be sure, there are several very good driving holes. 7-9 each have hazards on the short line and there’s a good benefit to keeping close to them. Same with the 14th, a dogleg right playing out toward the ocean with a bunker at the corner of the dogleg. But there were also a lot of holes, like 4, 6, 10, 11, 16, and especially 18 where I felt the drives just weren’t very interesting. I didn’t feel that the approaches on the latter 3 holes were anything special either.

Now let’s set aside the course rankings. If I do that, this course is in some pretty lofty company. And it deserves to be. You know when you see the 1st green that this course is something special. Some of the greens are among the most original that you’ll see. The 11th green stands out—the best way to describe the green contours I think are as Y-shaped, with a Y-shaped trough running through the center and across the back and high front-left/right wings. There are also a few shots that I really like including the approach to the tough par 4 9th, the second on the par 5 12th over cross bunkers, and the uphill par 3 15th.

So St. Patrick’s Links still is, I think, an essential part of a comprehensive Ireland golf trip. While remote, there are a few other very good courses in this remote northwest corner of Ireland to round out your visit, including two others here at the Rosapenna resort, which also boasts a lovely hotel and facilities. And I’m not sure that this course isn’t better than I think it is. If you visit, there’s a good chance that you’ll be more impressed than I was.

No. 17: St. George’s Hill—Red/Blue (England, UK)

Like Sunningdale’s New Course, St. George’s Hill is the work of Harry Colt. Also like the New, the lists have become much more favorable to St. George’s Hill in recent years. The course is now a fixture on world top 100 lists, albeit usually near the bottom. While unlike the best of its heathland neighbors, I don’t think it would be a shoe-in for my list, I think the holes are at a consistently higher level than Sunningdale’s New Course. It also has one of the best pieces of rolling heathland property and the design uses the land’s features exceptionally well. St. George’s Hill is clearly in the top tier of the heathland courses.

St. George’s Hill is actually 3 nine hole courses, but the Red and Blue nines constitute the main 18, in that order. Played that way, the course gets off to an excellent start, with a mid-length par 4 that goes downhill, then uphill to a narrow green and a long par 4 with a great approach gradually uphill over two perfectly placed bunkers. The 4th and 5th, a drivable par 4 with a heavily bunkered, wedge-shaped green and an uphill mid-length par 4, are two more fine holes and the drop shot par 3 8th over some cavernous bunkers is justly famous. So that’s a lot of good golf on the front nine.

And the back nine is even better, starting with the famous long par 4 10th featuring both a blind drive and blind approach. It’s the first of several par 4’s that are notable for how well they use the contour of the land to create driving challenges and opportunities. On the long par 4 13th, a diagonal ridge works the opposite direction of the dogleg, repelling weak drives. The slope of the 16th fairway will sling a draw into the ideal location but leave a fade stranded, with a long, sidehill approach to a hillside green. And on the long par 4 17th, a hill on the right side of the fairway stops weak drives played out to the right, kicks weak drives down the center to the left, and slings good drives up the right side forward to the perfect position. There’s a lot to study in how this course uses topography to make great driving holes.

There really aren’t too many drawbacks to St. George’s Hill. Like a lot of the other heathland courses, the greens aren’t too special. But going hole-by-hole, it’s a lot of strong holes and not a lot of lesser ones. There aren’t as many that are quirky or surprising like on some of my higher-ranked heathland courses and that holds it back a bit in my estimation. But I can understand why someone would think this is a world top 100 course. So much of it is so well done and it’s hard to find anything negative.

No. 16: Old Macdonald (Oregon, USA)

We finally get to the first Bandon course on my list. But I don’t think Old Macdonald is last place among the Bandon courses—I’d have it 3rd or 4th on the list, ahead of the Sheep Ranch which is, I think, by far the weakest of the full-length courses. I’m so not-a-fan of the Sheep Ranch that I didn’t even bother to write a review—although I probably should have because I’ve written reviews for far lesser courses. In fact, I preferred the 13 hole Bandon Preserve par 3 course (the best of the par 3 courses at the big new resorts) to the Sheep Ranch.

But this is a post about Old Macdonald, which deserves our full attention. For a lot of the guys I went with, this was their least favorite Bandon course and I got the sense that many others feel the same way. I think most of that comes down to the greens, which are huge and wild. A lot of people think that Tom Doak gets carried away with his greens and that this course is one of the main exhibits for the case.

Yes, the greens are wild. But I don’t think that they’re overdone. Part of this is for aesthetic reasons—the big, heavily contoured greens fit the open, heavily contoured landscape very well. But I think many of the wilder individual greens work well in their own right. One of the reasons for this is that on the wildest greens, like on the short par 3 5th, you can see enough of the contours to know where you can and can’t hit given the pin placement. I’m not always a defender of Doak’s greens—see The Loop or his sadly defunct Black Forest in northern Michigan. But here, as at St. Patrick’s Links, I think he and his team did a tremendous job.

Of course the course’s name cues you in to something important—it’s supposed to be a series of Macdonald/Raynor templates, or at least variations on them. To be honest, I’m not sure that I would have recognized a single hole as a Macdonald template, except for maybe the Road Hole green. But setting that aside, I thought that several of the individual holes were excellent. I loved the short par 4 3rd with its drive blind over the dune ridge and past the famous ghost tree. I also liked the impossible long par 4 4th, the aforementioned short 5th, the Road Hole (no. 11) and the great take on the alps/punchbowl, no. 16.

Most of the supporting cast is very strong as well, although I wasn’t a huge fan of the close, with the very confusing par 5 17th and a very artificial-looking punchbowl green on the 18th. Nobody seems to like the Redan 12th hole, which is not a Redan but is an excellent example of the overcooked-green-complex-with-too-severe-of-runoffs-at-the-edge template that we see all-to-often on newer courses.

Unfortunately, I only got one go around Old Macdonald and I’m not sure that I’m as confident in my assessment of this course as others. This is a very complicated course and there are a lot of nuances that I may have missed. If anything, it might be a bit better than my assessment.

No. 15: Bandon Dunes (Oregon, USA)

Here’s the course that started it all. The original course at Bandon Dunes—or as some like to call it (appropriately enough), the OG—appears to have undergone a lot of changes over the years, perhaps to incorporate some of the better features of the many courses that it inspired. While originally, the course was like most others from the 80s and 90s in that it had a lot of rough around the greens, now—like most courses built these days—it has a lot of short grass around them. Bunkers have been moved around and waste areas added. Still, this course is a bit polarizing, with some guys thinking it’s the best at the resort (including several in my group) and others thinking that it’s overrated and doesn’t deserve a spot on a world top 100 list, where it still often places.

I suspect that a lot of the latter group haven’t seen Bandon Dunes in awhile. Because while I can understand thinking that it maybe doesn’t belong in the top 100 in the world, I can’t imagine thinking that it’s far off. This is a very sound, very interesting course with a lot of variety across the holes. Yes, there are a few clunky points in the routing on the front nine. Yes, some of the shaping on the front nine has that 90s three-mounds-around-the-green look. But a few subpar features and holes (all of which are on the front nine) aside, there’s just so much positive that stands out.

First of all, the famous stretch 4-6 is as good as advertised. The long par 4’s nos. 4 and 5 are two of the more difficult, but best holes (especially off the tee) at the resort and the par 3 6th, with its green now surrounded by short grass, now has a level of interest to match its setting. And the back nine is simply outstanding. It’s got such a good mix of holes; there are several shorter par 4’s, but they call for very different types of drives. The 16th, which is drivable when the wind comes from the north, becomes a real puzzle when the wind blows from the south and you’re not sure where out there between the bunkers you can fit your ball. There’s an endlessly wide par 5, no. 13, with fairway contours that would fit on any of the best links courses. And there’s a very exacting par 3, no. 15, where it’s very easy to sink your round, but also easy enough to avoid damage if you identify the safe side of the green and hit it there. That’s a lot of good golf.

I think the 15th is indicative of the biggest strengths of this course—more than most courses I can think of, this one really rewards the person who thinks their way around, identifying the safe spots and playing to them when the situation isn’t favorable. There are several holes that you can challenge off the tee (8, 10, 14, 16), but get yourself in trouble if you don’t execute to a high level. No wonder this course is so well-liked for big tournaments. I’m not sure if most recognize it, but there’s real depth to this course. And it’s got an outstanding set of greens and green surrounds—very interesting, but not over-the top.

So I’m definitely closer to the views of those in my group that thought it was truly great than those who think it’s overrated. Still, it might be only the 4th best at the resort for me—but that has more to do with needing another go or two around the more complicated Old Macdonald than thinking I might have overrated this course. I played this course twice and liked it as much the second time as the first.

No. 14: Cabot Cliffs (Nova Scotia, Canada)

Of every course in the upper half of this list, I’ve struggled the most with figuring out where to put Coore and Crenshaw’s Cabot Cliffs. It has made a huge splash in Canadian golf and is regularly ranked as the top course in the country. But—spoiler alert—it wouldn’t be no. 1 on my list because I think its sister course, Cabot Links is clearly superior. And I also think that it’s lofty place on top 100 world lists—it seems to rank most often in the 50s-60s—is probably excessive.

I think the issue with Cabot Cliffs comes down to the fact that while it undoubtedly has a handful of the most spectacular and best holes in the world, the majority of the holes are more good than great. The quality of the median hole here is a bit lower than other courses in this section of my list. I also don’t think this course flows as well as its peers, which I’d chalk up in part to the mix of 6 par 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s—a mix that I’ve never liked. On top of that, the clifftop site gets very windy which, combined with the site’s hilliness, can make for some wild times…perhaps too much so. And if this course is firm—which it was for my visit and I would imagine it is throughout much of the summer—there are some holes (namely the par 3’s nos. 12 and 14) where it’s just not clear how you’re supposed to play them.

Although the weakest holes aren’t quite as weak, the front nine reminds me a bit of that at Bandon Dunes. There are some excellent holes—the very unusual 2nd with a sand dune in front of the green, the 5th with its all-world drive, and the 6th, with its green tucked in a dell in some very large sand dunes—but most of the rest (other than the drive on the 7th hole) don’t strike me as all that special. I really didn’t care for the alternate green par 3 4th, the par 5 8th is dull, and the par 3 9th, while gorgeous, isn’t very interesting (still, they’re better than 7 and 9 on Bandon Dunes).

But as with Bandon Dunes, the back nine is much stronger. And as much as I love holes like 14-16 on Bandon Dunes, the best there simply can’t compare with the finishing 4 holes here. Simply put, the tee shot on the famous par 3 16th with its clifftop green jutting out into the ocean and the drive uphill, over the cliff’s edge on the short par 4 17th are the two most thrilling shots that I’ve ever played on a golf course. Nothing has ever gotten my heart beating like the drive on 17. And they’re not just spectacular, they’re very good. You can play safely out to the left on 16 (although you might end up in a bunker) and the carry on 17 is not as far as it seems. If you pull it off, you’ll be near the green.

The other two holes in the closing stretch, the par 5’s 15, which plays downhill to the coastline with several decisions to make about bunker carries and 18, with the coastline hard on its right from tee to green and forming an inlet about 130 yards short of the green that forces a decision on the second, are also excellent, if not as spectacular. And I loved the par 5 10th, which is a mirror image of the 18th but almost feels like it hovers over the ocean. The rest of the holes play inland and are more modest, like many of those on the front. But with the wind, the firmness, and the slopes (and the black flies), they were as challenging as you could want.

I think the best way to describe Cabot Cliffs is as a course with 6 or 7 of the best holes in the world, but where the remainder are a bit less satisfying than the weaker holes on its peer courses. And the other thing is that with the firmness, the wind, the short grass around the greens, and the presence of severe slopes around so many of the greens, it can—like Greywalls or Mammoth Dunes—play like a bit of a funhouse (one that’s certainly less fun than Mammoth Dunes). Cabot Cliffs is clearly an excellent course and when it’s at its best, there are few that are better and even fewer that are more spectacular. But I don’t think it’s as consistent or as sound as the best of the modern crop of courses.

No. 13: Sand Valley (Wisconsin, USA)

In contrast to Cabot Cliffs, I feel like Coore and Crenshaw’s Sand Valley has become unfairly forgotten among the big new courses in the 21st century. It made a big splash when it opened, albeit in part because it was the first course at Mike Keiser’s successor to Bandon Dunes. But with the opening of The Lido, the Cabot courses, and places like Landmand, you don’t hear so much anymore about the original Sand Valley course. And it’s also fallen in a lot of the rankings. I’m not sure that I’ve seen it on a top 100 world list and I think it probably misses as many top 100 US lists as it makes these days.

This downward reassessment of Sand Valley is unjustified. This is an excellent course, surely among the best of the modern era and I think even better than several of its peers at Bandon Dunes and Cabot. Other than the fact that it isn’t the hot new thing, I can’t see what about this course would cause someone to think it’s lesser than those. There are many great holes and the quality of the lesser holes is definitely higher than at Cabot Cliffs or Bandon Dunes. The green complexes are very well-conceived, with a great deal of variety in their complexity. And other than a few superfluous features on a few holes, there are few weaknesses.

So let’s go through some of the long list of great holes and interesting features because I’m afraid that when a lot of people talk about what makes courses (not) great, they tend to do it on general vibes and can’t give many good details. The opening stretch is outstanding, with a short par 4 opener that rewards one who sets up a wide angle into a skinny green, a mid-length par 4 where the deeper you hit it into the green, the bigger trouble you court at the sides, and a par 3 that looks like it would belong at Pine Valley. And there’s no let up in quality from here; the expansive, the par 5 4th is uphill all the way and very demanding on your ball striking if you want to reach the green before you’ve reached par. And still, the closing three holes on the front are probably my 3 favorites—a very strategic par 5 where you need to skirt trouble on the right to avoid having to take the long way home, a great uphill par 3 that would fit in well on Colt’s best heathland courses, and a great short par 4 with its green beautifully tucked into the trees.

It continues on the back. The par 5 10th might be my favorite hole on the course; if you carry the bunkers up the tight left side, you’ve got a clear shot at the green down a fairway that narrows in the lay up zone. If you take the safe drive out to the right, it’s difficult to fit one into the lay up zone because the fairway is now at an angle. The 11th green is a masterclass in subtlety, with its right edge gently running off into a chipping area like the greens on the great Pinehurst no. 2. The longer par 4’s 15 and 16 reward drives that challenge the junk on the left, with the latter green being on the side of a hill, especially well-guarded by bunker, and very difficult to hit if you haven’t driven boldly and succeeded.

On top of that, Sand Valley doesn’t have any of the excess of Mammoth Dunes. This course is much more naturalistically shaped. Some contours will help you, but many will hurt you. A big part of playing this course well is about avoiding the latter, something at which I didn’t succeed (I played two rounds here and they were two of my worst scores that year).

A lot of people point to the final 2 holes, a blind par 3 with a 10,000 sq. ft.+ green and the endless par 5 18th with bunkers scattered everywhere as weaknesses. I guess I’d agree with this—they’re probably my two least favorite holes on the course. But neither is a bad one. If you go hole-by-hole on this course, I just can’t see how you wouldn’t think it stands with the best courses of this era. This is no lesser Coore-Crenshaw course and I wish that the course raters would take a more careful look at what’s in the ground here rather than writing this course off as yesterday’s news.

No. 12: Lawsonia—Links Course (Wisconsin, USA)

In contrast to Sand Valley, Lawsonia’s Links Course has become much more fashionable, going from being a course that I don’t think even many in Wisconsin knew about to making lists of top 100 courses in the US. And here I agree completely with the latest fashion. Lawsonia’s Links Course is exceptional. It’s easily top 100 in the US and might make a good case for being top 100 in the world. When I compare this course to the courses in the London Heathlands that routinely show up in the top 100, it compares quite favorably, finishing on my list ahead of such heavyweights as Sunningdale—New and St. George’s Hill. It’s also always been my answer to the tough question ‘what’s the best public course in Wisconsin,’ although I’d like to see if it retains that place in the wake of the openings of The Lido and Sage Valley.

The Links is the crown jewel in the career work of William Langford and Theodore Moreau, who left courses throughout the midwest in the Macdonald-Raynor style, but without the liberal inclusion of template holes. Unlike many of their other courses, with the exception of a few sand bunkers becoming grass and the growth of trees, the Links has changed little over the years. So when in the last 15 or 20 years the golf architecture geeks started showing up and talking about how great the bones of this place were, it was fairly easy to get it in top shape—just cut down a few trees and cart in some sand. They haven’t filled all of the bunkers but honestly, the remaining ones don’t really need it—these steep faced trenches work well enough as hazards without sand.

Ok, that’s enough preamble. At the risk of sounding like a YouTube video, what makes Lawsonia’s Links Course so great? Really…everything—very thoughtful tee-to-green design, having holes that fall across the rolling land in different ways with varying bunker schemes, and some of the most interestingly contoured large greens that you’ll ever see. Several of the greens remind me of Woking in the oddness of their contouring.

And it doesn’t take long; after two holes, I knew this was going to be a great course. The mid-length par 4 opener is one of my favorites in the world. It’s semi-blind and curves right, with tons of open space to the left. But unless you hug the right side, you’ll have a very awkward approach to a green that looks like it’s been built on a mountain (just look at it from behind the green), sloping from back-left to front right. The long par 4 second features an even blinder, uphill drive over a V-shaped bunker complex which I just love and a beautiful, downhill approach over a grass trench.

And these may not even be among the three best holes on the front nine. I’m a sucker for uphill par 3’s and the 195 yard 4th over a sand-filled trench is one of my favorites anywhere. And that’s just the crescendo leading to the true high point, the short par 5 5th and long par 4 6th, two of the best consecutive holes that I’ve ever seen. I love the drive on 5—it’s the narrowest on the course and there’s tree trouble on both sides but if you it a good one (it favors a fade), you can clear a ridge in the fairway and have a short second. And I might love the green even more—it’s sort-of two-tiered but the tier is kind-of an upside down V, with the lower part being at the back right and left. The 6th turns slightly right and again, favors a fade over a diagonal trench bunker. If you shy away from the carry, you will have a long approach and can run through the fairway into a bunker. The approach is much more difficult as the green sits above a significant false front. But again, it’s all-world, with very unusual contouring—again, kind of two-tiered but the tier is diagonal from front-left to back-middle, resulting in a larger, high front-right and a smaller, low back-left.

After that, even the famous short par 3 7th with—apparently—a box car buried under its green couldn’t leave that much of an impression on me. But the long par 5 9th, which curves right and then requires you to run the gauntlet between two trenches if you want to go for the green or have a short third, still did. This is one of my favorite second shots on a par 5, provided that you’re playing from far enough back to bring the bunkers into play.

To put a fine point on things so far, the front nine is one of the best that I’ve seen, belonging in the same class as the famous front nine at Crystal Downs.

Although a lot of people prefer it, I think the more open back nine is a step down from the front. There are a lot of very good holes, but I don’t think that there are any truly great holes, like 1, 4-6, and maybe 9. The closest is probably the long par 5 13th, which favors a draw slung around a complex of fairway bunkers and then a second which must get within about 80 yards of the green to clear a massive dip in the fairway. With the exception of maybe the par 5 18th, the finishers are a bit tamer, especially off the tee. But I’d also note the three opening holes—a very long par 3, a par 5 zigzagging between bunkers, and a ~190 yard par 3 with another great green—as fine holes on the second nine.

I don’t remember if I heard it from someone or read it somewhere, but someone who had played all the big courses on Long Island said that if this course were there, it’d be recognized as one of the best in the country. I haven’t played those courses, but I can see that. So many holes stand out when you go hole-by-hole and there’s a lot that’s very original. One of the knocks on the Macdonald-Raynor courses is that they all have the same kind of holes. You can’t say that about this course. I didn’t recognize any holes here as templates and I think that the course is better for it.

Hopefully Lawsonia’s Links Course continues to rise in the rankings. Even though it’s making a lot of top 100 US lists, it’s usually near the bottom. I suspect it belongs somewhere in the middle.

No. 11: Rye (England, UK)

Rye seems to be one of the more contentious among British links courses. Some, like Tom Doak, think it’s one of the absolute best. But the course is often not that high on lists of the best courses in the UK and Ireland and it probably misses more top 100 world lists than it makes.

I think I fall somewhere in between. I haven’t read much about this course because I don’t think that many people have seen it. Rye is a very aristocratic club—home to a famous match between Oxford and Cambridge every winter—and while a nice email to the club secretary got me a warm welcome, I don’t think they’re exactly lobbying people to come here to give their opinion of the course.

From the little that I have read—and certainly from my own experience—I think I can see the issue here. Rye is a very tough golf course, one with some awkward and severe holes. The front nine can’t take up more than 50 acres, with most of this space occupied by a 40 foot high, narrow dune ridge. That makes it a bit of a shooting gallery at times and also creates some of the more unusual and difficult holes that I’ve seen, none more so than the par 4 4th, which actually plays on the dune ridge. I’ve never seen a hole like this. And maybe for good reason—with a cross-wind blowing, the narrow fairway felt almost impossible to hit and no one with more room would have built such a hole. After that hole, the long par 4 6th, where you drive completely blind over the ridge to a fairway that turns sharp left and runs down the base of the ridge, felt kind of normal.

But while this is a very difficult course, perhaps the most difficult relative to par (of 68) that I’ve seen, so many of its holes are outstanding. And while the 4th may not be my favorite example, I thought that some of the other awkward holes were terrific, none more so than the long par 4 13th, with a diagonal drive over dunes on the left and an odd, raised pipe that runs across the middle of the fairway, then a completely blind second over the big dune ridge. This is one of my favorite blind shots anywhere because if you’re aware of your landscape (and take heed of the useful aiming posts), you can tell that the green will probably have the ridge close on its left but have flat, open space on the right, making this a good direction to hedge. Which it is.

I think that most of what discussion there is around Rye focuses on the very quirky and difficult front nine, but I thought that the back was probably the stronger of the two. The run from 12-18 is outstanding, with 15, 16, and 18 (and the aforementioned 13th) being four of the best long par 4’s in southeastern England. The 15th crosses some of the most perfect linksland you’ll ever see and the 16th has a green that rivals the best at Royal St. George’s or Royal Cinque Ports. Some people knock the 10th and 11th as incongruous with the rest of the course and aesthetically, they are—the 11th plays over a pond and has a warehouse as a backdrop. But looks aside, each is a good hole.

Of course if you know anything about Rye, you know that I’ve buried the lede. If there is one thing it’s known for, it’s its set of 5 par 3’s, about which some famous old golf writer said: “the hardest shots at Rye are the second shots on the par 3’s.” It sounds like a joke…until you play them. The 5th plays along the same dune ridge as its neighbors the 4th and 6th and the 7th plays up it from a lower position near the 6th green. Miss the 5th right or the 7th short and you’ll know what that writer meant—pitching blind 20 feet up a hill is certainly going to be one of the more difficult shots that you’ll play anywhere. And it gets harder—the 200+ yard 14th with a green about 30 feet wide perched in the side of the dune ridge with a deep bunker on the right, might just be the hardest green in regulation that I’ve ever seen.

Still, despite their difficulty, the par 3’s are truly a world-class set. The 5th green is deep and narrows toward the back, leaving ample room to play safe at the front. Despite its difficulty, the 7th is as great as advertised, with another of the best greens in the country. And while no one seems to give it much regard, the ~250 yard 17th across flat land features some of the best subtle shaping that I’ve seen and is exemplary for a hole of this length.

No. 30: The Pfau Course at Indiana University (Indiana, USA)

Here’s a course that I wasn’t quite expecting to put in such lofty company when I visited in late October 2024. The Pfau Course at Indiana University is a Steve Smyers total renovation of a pre-existing course. Apparently the old course wasn’t great, motivating the design of an entirely new one. Good choice—this open, rolling piece of land is one of the best that I’ve seen for a course and it would be a shame to have a design that wasn’t up to snuff.

Smyers’s design is. The Pfau Course stretches to about 8,000 yards (what you need for the college kids these days) and while what I had read about the course suggested that it was extremely hard, I didn’t find this to be so. Provided that you pick the correct tees, it’s very playable, with plenty of open short grass leading into the greens. It’s also very well thought-out from tee-to-green. There’s a good mix of holes with respect to how they fall over the slope of the land and in the bunker patterns. I think we encounter just about every combination of dogleg, uphill, downhill, and side sloping fairway. Some holes are heavily bunkered, but most aren’t. The shaping is excellent throughout; the bunkers are visually appealing but simply constructed and the greens are interesting but not overdone. Smyers shows much more restraint than the architects of some of the courses lower on my list. Plus, the course is exceptionally pretty, surrounded by mature forest with beautiful, native prairie grasses between the holes.

Honestly, I don’t have much negative to say about The Pfau Course. There are probably only two holes (14, 16) that I would call truly outstanding and that’s certainly fewer than some of the courses above. But there isn’t a weak hole in the bunch. Hole-for-hole, it’s the most solid course so far on my list. And I’m so impressed by how well-done the shaping is. You won’t see too many designs that are a better fit for their property.

No. 29: Pine Needles (North Carolina, USA)

Everyone has their favorite among the ‘other’ courses in the North Carolina sandhills. For me, it’s Pine Needles. I’ve always liked this course so much. It’s the right degree of challenge, there are several excellent holes, and it’s a beautiful walk around an expansive and varied property. It just gets so many things right.

The greens here remind me of a friendlier version of the famous no. 2 greens—many run off at the edges, but for the most part, to a lesser degree. These greens are also quite a bit larger. Because the property is so large and varied, the holes also fall across it in different ways, creating a lot of diversity off the tee. There are uphill drives, downhill drives, reverse camber fairways, bunkers to skirt or carry. It’s got a bit of everything.

I suppose if you wanted to criticize it you could say that like The Pfau Course, there aren’t a lot of standout holes. Sure, it may not be Pebble Beach. But the opening holes on both nines are excellent par 5’s, the par 3’s are a varied and visually appealing set, and there are some very good tough par 4’s, especially nos. 2 and 14. And also like The Pfau Course, there isn’t much negative to say about it. Pine Needles is a course to which I’ll always return when I’m in the North Carolina sandhills.

No. 28: Woking (England, UK)

Here is a course which has inspired much love among architecture aficionados. That’s because contrary to some of what we’ve seen in recent years in Great Britain and Ireland, Woking is one of the best cases of course improvements. Over two decades in the early 20th century, two members, John Low and Stuart Paton made continuous alterations to the course, adding features to make holes more interesting (including the famous centerline bunkers on the short par 4 4th) and reshaping several greens to make them more interesting. This spirit of improvement continues today; the club has removed several trees and shrubs in an attempt to return the course to its old playing characteristics.

Woking is rightly beloved. It has by far the best set of greens of the London heathland courses. Many of these are strikingly original. Take, for example, the par 4 13th green, which has high tiers at its front-left and back-right and a sort-of hourglass-shaped trough through the middle. Or the par 5 15th, which has a ridge that dips into the middle of the green like a nose. Or the approximately 9-tiered 12th green. And it’s not just the green contours that make the holes great. Of course, there’s the famous aforementioned 4th. And the par 5 14th, with its green right next to the clubhouse patio which—along with the roof—is in play. And the long par 4 17th, with one of the best subtle, fall away greens that I’ve seen.

To be sure, most of the interest here has to do with the greens. The terrain is among the less interesting of the big heathland courses and there are a few holes that are either a bit weak or awkward off the tee. But those greens…they’re one of the most interesting sets that you’ll ever see. And they show that greens can be very interesting without being over the top.

No. 27: Walton Heath—Old Course (England, UK)

I mentioned when I reviewed Walton Heath’s New Course that I didn’t think that there was a big difference in quality between it and the Old. Yet I have 8 very good courses between them. So I must think that the Old is better in some way.

The difference is that the Old has the strengths of the New, namely Fowler’s quirky earthworks, none of its weaknesses, and a few more top notch holes. A few stretches on the Old really shine. One stretch is at the beginning. Discounting the difficult, very long par 3 opener and a dangerous road crossing that follows (a hallmark of English courses), holes 2-5 constitute one of the best opening stretches in English golf, with two fine long par 4’s (2, 4), an excellent short par 4 (3), and the par 4 5th, which has one of my favorite greens in the world.

And as good as that stretch is, the stretch of 13-16, which features 3 par 5’s, is even better. The expansive par 5 14th must be on the short list of best holes in heathland golf. In the middle of the property, if there were ever scenery that typified great heathland golf, it’s the views down and around this hole. The par 5 16th, which would be the standout hole on most courses, is clearly no better than second-best here.

The middle stretch of the course is a bit less interesting and the finishing two holes are solid, but nothing special. Still, the Old has enough top notch holes to make a strong case as one of the top 5 London heathland courses, if not top 100 in the world as it has so often been ranked.

No 26: Portmarnock—Holes 1-18 (Republic of Ireland)

Portmarnock has also been a stalwart on world top 100 lists since I started following them over 25 years ago. Here, like Walton Heath Old, I think it’s due to the course’s storied championship history. Portmarnock has hosted many Irish Opens that have been won by many of Europe’s top players.

Like a few other courses in this section of my list, I think that Portmarnock is a bit overrated. It is an excellent, championship test of golf, with many pot bunkers (there must be >150) testing most drives and approaches. But many of the holes lack the small fairway contours that make links golf so interesting. I think that the course also lacks great holes. On the front nine, only the long par 4 4th, the par 4 8th with its raised green, and maybe the par 3 7th stand out. Other than the famous par 3 15th, which is all-world, the back nine is mostly very good rather than great.

But therein lies the course’s strength; while you couldn’t point to more than a few holes as outstanding, they’re all at least very good. Most of the holes pose a stern challenge without ever being over the top, something that’s important on such a site where the ground is likely to be firm and the wind is likely to blow. And there’s one more important strength: unlike many links courses, which are routed out-and-back and have stretches of holes playing in the same direction, Portmarnock’s routing constantly changes direction, increasing variety in the wind and keeping players off guard. I can see why this course has hosted so many big European Tour events. And if the R&A ever brought the Open to the Republic, this course would be at the top of the list to host it—although that’d probably be in part because of its close proximity to Dublin.

While I can’t imagine many falling in love with Portmarnock, I think almost everyone will admire and respect it.

No. 25: Blackwolf Run—River Course (Wisconsin, USA)

In contrast to Portmarnock, here’s a course that has experienced a reversal of fortune in the golf magazine lists since I started looking at them. Pete Dye’s River Course at Blackwolf Run used to be well up lists of top 100 courses in the US and was usually in the top 10 public courses. Now you rarely seen it on the former and it’s lucky to be in the top 30 of the latter.

Again, I don’t agree with the lists. While I don’t think the River belongs in the top 100 in the world, or probably even in the top 100 in the US, it’s a stunning course and must be one of the top 20 or 25 US public courses. And that’s for a course with some significant drawbacks, more than any on this list except maybe Greywalls. One, it has a weak set of par 3’s. Two, the routing is disjunct, with holes 5-13 built later and separated from the rest by a few hundred yards but grafted into the middle (between holes 4 and 14). Three, holes 4 and 14, running around opposite sides of a pond, are aesthetically out-of-place, looking like they belong on one of Dye’s many Florida courses. And four, there are a lot of awkward trees in play—the overhanging willows on the par 3 13th are infamous—but there are some recently-planted ones that also make little sense.

Given all that, how can I still think that this course is so good? Simply put, most of the remaining holes are among the most original and best that you’ll see. The course weaves around the Sheboygan River—a proper rushing river—creating some of the most thrilling shots and holes that I’ve seen, including the drivable par 4 9th and the stunning par 5 11th, which would be on my short list of favorite par 5’s. Not too far behind is the par 5 8th, playing down from a high bluff over the river then back up to the green with a split level lay up fairway where playing to the tighter high level gives you a significant advantage for your third. I could go on about additional holes, including 5, 6, 12, 16, and 18, but you get the point. And the greens might be the best set that I’ve seen on a Dye course.

So yes, this course has its negatives. But these are mostly stylistic issues rather than overdone features like at Greywalls or Arcadia Bluffs. This course, while tough, is still quite playable. And I just find it so thrilling and original.

No. 24: St. Enodoc (England, UK)

As with Blackwolf Run’s River Course, St. Enodoc has also seen a significant reappraisal on recent lists, but to its benefit. What was once seen as a nice holiday course—British for ‘a not serious but occasionally nice course that I play when I’m on vacation’—thanks to its championing by Tom Doak and others, the James Braid designed St. Enodoc now frequently finds itself on world top 100 lists. I think that its upward mobility may have gone a bit far, but there’s no doubt that St. Enodoc is a fine course with several excellent—and unusual—holes.

St. Enodoc gets off to an outstanding start. I felt that the par 5 opener was the finest that I played in England. And I’m not sure that there’s a better drivable par 4 in the world than the 4th, zigzagging around an out-of-bounds cattle pasture with its narrow green hard up against the fence. After that, the famous 6th, with its 50 foot high sand dune obscuring the approach to the green, couldn’t make the impression on me that it deserved.

Like a few other courses in this middle section of my list, St. Enodoc has a weak stretch in its middle, namely holes 11-14, which start on flat farmland that becomes hillside farmland. This stretch really felt to me like it belonged on a lesser course—although you usually find such indifferent stretches on a Braid course. He didn’t get the plum assignments like Harry Colt. But the finish is strong, starting with a quirky drop shot par 3 over a road and 3 holes on prime dune land.

There is one very polarizing hole here, the par 5 10th, which doglegs left around a bunch of bushes. Many find it too narrow and awkward. I loved it. You can’t unleash a full drive most of the time but if you’re precise, you can use the contours of the fairway to feed your ball into a narrow strip of fairway and shorten the approach. It’s a really quirky hole—and dangerous, with the tourist path running along the left edge of the fairway—but it’s one that I felt works and fits this oddball holiday course well.

No. 23: Cape Breton Highlands Links (Nova Scotia, Canada)

Now if there were ever a course on this list that should speak to me, it’s this one: Cape Breton Highlands Links, the centerpiece of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park at the northern tip of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. It combines the majesty of a national park, a great, tough hike, and course designed by Canada’s favorite golf architect son, Stanley Thompson.

This course has long been recognized as one of the best in the world, although it’s also quite an outpost, being a good 3-4 hours drive from Halifax, which itself isn’t exactly a great population center or tourist destination. But now that they’ve built Cabot about 1 1/2 hours away, I think more American golfers, rather than just Canadians on a national parks tour, will come up here and see it.

Actually, I have mixed feelings about this course. One big negative is that by any reasonable standard, this routing is unwalkable, with several multi-hundred yard walks from a green to the next tee. Yet at the same time, since we’re in a national park and the surroundings are spectacular, it seems like there’s less of a reason to mind that. The long walks also enable us to experience very different parts of this expansive property, making it, golf aside, an outstanding hike. There are few courses that I’d rather just hike. And it’s a national park…you’re supposed to be hiking here. Until a few decades back, that’s what everyone did—there were no golf carts. So I guess it isn’t unwalkable.

There are two other issues. One, a lot of holes have significant tree overgrowth. Apparently they can’t cut down trees in a national park and it’s detracting from some of the best holes, most notably nos. 7 and 15. And two, there are a few holes, especially the middle stretch 9-12, that are indifferent.

But most of the rest are outstanding and, because of the expansive routing, of incredible variety. I love the long 2nd, tumbling out of the woods and down toward the ocean and a crazy green. Nos. 6 and 7, running along an ocean-adjacent marsh and bouncing over and around hills up into the mountains respectively, must be the world’s best back-to-back par 5’s. The middle of the back nine is also outstanding, with the wild fairway on the long par 4 13th, the even wilder fairway on the short par 5 16th, the aforementioned par 5 15th, and the tough, reverse camber fairway leading to a crazy green on the par 4 14th.

This course has one of the best sets of green contours that you’ll ever see, ranging from subtle but interesting (3, 7, 10) to wild (2, 5, 14, 18). Still, they never feel over-the-top because the maintenance crew keeps them a bit slower (perhaps due to lack of funds) and they don’t have steep drop-offs to their sides.

So while I have some reservations, Cape Breton Highlands Links is a great experience and an excellent course.

No. 22: Sunningdale—New Course (England, UK)

Continuing a the recent theme of reversals of fortune, when I first started looking at golf magazine lists of the best courses in the world, the Old Course at Sunningdale featured prominently but the New, while often fondly referenced in discussion of the Old, was nowhere to be seen. That has changed. The New is now a staple on these lists. Some think it’s even better than the Old.

While I think the New is an excellent course, clearly in the top tier in the London heathlands, I can’t quite bring myself to agree with the revisionist history. It’s going to be awhile before we reach Sunningdale’s Old Course on my list, which gives you an idea of what I think of the difference between them. I’m also pretty skeptical that it belongs on a list of the top 100 courses in the world—for those following closely, that’s four British/Irish courses in this section of my list (Walton Heath Old, Portmarnock, St. Enodoc, Sunningdale New) that continue to place on world top 100 lists and probably shouldn’t.

Why? A lot of people know the New Course’s strengths—the great par 3 5th and the stunning par 5 6th. These holes are as great as advertised, clearly both belonging on a short list of best heathland holes. But what of the rest of the course? While many of the holes are solid, it’s hard to point to many other outstanding ones. I like the long par 4 4th, the long par 5 13th with its centerline fairway bunker in the layup zone, and the par 4 15th with an awkward, blind pond in the crux of the dogleg, tempting you to try to cut the corner.

But beyond those (and many would dispute the 15th), what are the outstanding holes? 10? It’s a good long par 3, but awfully tough. 12? A good short par 4, but I don’t think anything too special. Everyone recognizes that the finishing holes are weak, although I would also point out that the opening 3 are very good. And another issue here, which is rarely an issue on the heathland courses, is that the trees are overgrown, narrowing several holes beyond what’s optimal. Plus, the heather is quite thick, making for a tough day if you’re not driving it well.

To be fair, I played the New in some pretty poor weather. But between the tree overgrowth and the lack of top flight holes, I was left wondering why this course is so highly regarded. It is beautiful and does have the Colt pedigree but hole-for-hole, I’m not quite seeing it. Still, maybe I’d need to give this course a go in better conditions to give it a fair assessment.

No. 21: Mammoth Dunes (Wisconsin, UK)

Mammoth Dunes has become a pretty controversial course, but for the opposite reason that most courses become controversial: people see it as too friendly and too forgiving of poor shots rather than unfairly punishing. And I can certainly understand where they’re coming from; I shot two very good scores here and didn’t play great in either round. I certainly didn’t get away with that kind of play next door at Sand Valley.

But—and maybe it’s because I shot two good scores here—I really liked Mammoth Dunes and thought that there was a lot here that’s very good. I think the two principal criticisms are that (1) the fairways are almost endlessly wide and (2) that the areas around the greens largely slope toward the green, saving a lot of mediocre shots.

The former is certainly true. But it’s also true that on several holes, you get a significant benefit from being on one side rather than the other. On the par 5’s especially, you have a much easier layup or shot at the green if you hug the trouble. The 7th in particular stands out—there’s miles to the left but if you stay away from the trouble on the right, the hill takes your ball further left, shortens your drive, and makes it harder to carry the crossing junk well short of the green and leave a decent length for your third.

And while the slopes allow you to get away with a lot of indifferent shots, they have to be the right kind of indifferent shots. Take the uphill par 3 4th. As I learned accidentally, a shot at the left side of the green will catch the contours and feed toward pins on the right side of the green, turning what you might have thought was a bad shot to a center pin into a great one. But if your indifferent shot goes at a center pin and comes up short, the ball will come backwards, down the hill. I do think that on balance, the slopes give you the benefit of the doubt. But the course rewards someone who knows the slopes and knows where the safer side to miss is. You can make the course work in your favor if you play smart here. If you play dumb, you’ll get away with a few, but will also end up in some very tough spots and might make a few big numbers.

So the course ends up being quite fun. What’s wrong with that? To hear some of the same people who champion width criticizing it here is a bit odd. And there are undoubtedly a few excellent holes here. I liked the par 5’s, especially nos. 3 and 7, the short, uphill par 4 no. 10, the spectacular short par 3 13th over a massive sand pit, and the Golf Digest design contest hole, the drivable par 4 14th, where a bold drive can use the fairway contours to feed onto the green.

Mammoth Dunes has also started to fall a bit in the rankings. Hopefully it doesn’t fall too far because it must be one of the top 20 or 25 public courses in the US.

No. 40: The Loop (Michigan, USA)

Although Tom Doak initially built his reputation as a writer about golf courses and golf course design, two of his first three design assignments were public courses in my home state of Michigan: High Pointe near Traverse City and Black Forest near Gaylord. Both courses sadly no longer exist; each would have been a strong contender for this list. High Pointe, however, has been partially recreated as a private course, featuring most of the holes from the original back nine.

But The Loop, Doak’s third entry into Michigan public golf, being the second of three courses at Forest Dunes, one of the state’s top two golf resorts (along with Arcadia Bluffs), is likely to stick. It's one of the most innovative courses designed in recent years, a reversible course consisting of 18 greens that can be played clockwise (the Black Course) or counterclockwise (the Red Course). As brilliant as this routing is, more noteworthy to me has always been the way that The Loop looks and plays—the scrubby pine forest surroundings remind me of heathland golf and the modest, sandy terrain and fescue fairways provide some of the best links conditions that you’ll see. This course consistently plays firmer and faster than almost every true links course that I’ve played!

Still, The Loop is a bit of a mixed bag. Doak opted for small, crowned green complexes surrounded by ample short grass but limited bunkering. Given the firmness of the terrain, several of these green complexes are too severe. I don’t understand why Doak didn’t do large, randomly contoured greens here. It would fit the landscape and would recall St. Andrew’s, another famous (originally) reversible course. I also think that some of the drives are a bit dull and that the design could have been a bit more active tee-to-green and a bit less active around the greens.

Nevertheless, The Loop has several of my favorite holes in the state of Michigan, especially 12-14 on the Black, 12 on the Red, and the finisher on the Red. And the playing conditions make it a unique and fun—albeit often frustrating—course to play. That was the clincher for The Loop edging out some of the honorable mentions and grabbing the first spot on this list.

No. 39: Greywalls (Michigan, USA)
​
A lot of people think that Greywalls is the best public course in the state of Michigan and one of the best in the country. There’s a strong case for that: it’s probably the most spectacular course in the state and it has a handful of holes that are unlike anything you’ll ever see. It must have been very difficult to route a course over this hilly, rocky property and Mike DeVries did an outstanding job with that—there are few green-to-tee walks longer than 100 yards, although the hilly nature of the property puts it beyond reasonable walkability for most. I’m not sure that there’s anyone who could have routed a course over this property better. Greywalls also has one of my favorite holes in the state, the par 4 4th with its fairway split into high and low sides by a complex of boulders. Several other holes (5-7, 10, 15) are also very good, although some of those are probably beyond many golfers’ abilities.

But Greywalls also stands out for having one of the longer lists of negatives of any course in my top 40. The basic problem is that like with Arcadia Bluffs and The Loop, there are too many overcooked green complexes. Again, given the severity of the property, this was always going to be a very difficult course—even if the greens had been quite tame. But many greens have severe interior contours (7, 17) and others have extreme runoffs at the edges including the 1st, which may be the most overcooked green complex I’ve ever seen, and the 14th. It’s just too much, too often. And the course is almost perversely well-maintained, with some of the best tight and fast fairways and greens in the state. This just makes it even more difficult to keep the ball within the margins.

Still, if you can turn off scoring mode and just take in the course’s scenery and its strikingly original holes, you’ll probably find this course to be one of your favorites.

No. 38: Barton Hills (Michigan, USA)

The bottom three courses on my list and two of the honorable mentions are all in my home state of Michigan. No wonder I’ve had such a difficult time ranking the best courses in Michigan.

To be honest, it feels a bit odd to me to rank Barton Hills, a less-well-known Donald Ross design outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan above other Michigan heavyweights like Arcadia Bluffs and Greywalls. It’s just so much tamer and less visually dramatic. But one, it’s not like I think there’s a significant difference. And two, Barton Hills is such a pleasant course with a lot of details that are, I think, very good.

The best thing about Barton Hills is its set of Ross greens. This is probably my favorite set of greens of the Michigan courses that I’ve reviewed. There’s a variety of shapes, sizes, and contours. Several greens (1, 6, 14) have some great corners, allowing for cool tucked pins. And while there’s a lot of contour in these greens, none of it is overdone. Many greens have areas where there’s less contour and areas where there’s more, making short putts straightforward but long putts quite difficult. I also appreciate the fact that many greens are open in front, allowing you to run the ball onto the green.

Like Arcadia Bluffs, Barton Hills gets off to a strong start, with two great longer par 4’s (1, 3) and a very good par 5. But the strength of the course is clearly its set of par 3’s, which present very different challenges. The course is not as interesting of the tee as most others on this list and the holes on the back nine could run together a bit in the memory. But it’s an excellent course, one very much worth playing if you’re in the Detroit area and get a chance. It’s the type of course where I’d really like to be a member.

No. 36: The Island (Republic of Ireland)

The Island was one of the top 5 courses that I played on my Ireland trip from Dublin to Donegal in 2023, although clearly 5th among that bunch. This course’s reputation has grown recently as the course has undergone several renovations, probably to attract the attention of course raters and the dollars of American tourists. One of my German playing partners told me that he had seen it ranked as the top course in Ireland.

Now I wouldn’t go anywhere near that far, but The Island is very good. The dunes are large and dramatic and, consequently, there are some very dramatic and interesting holes—starting with the 1st, where you drive either to the base of or between two huge sand dunes. Several interesting holes follow including the par 5 3rd with its green perched on a narrow ridge and the short par 3 4th, with brilliant contouring on and around its green. The back nine also has its share of excellent holes including the par 5 10th doglegging around out-of-bounds, the long par 3 13th, reminiscent of the famous Calamity at Royal Portrush, and the par 4 17th with its drive along a massive dune and sandpit and its partially blind, subtle green.

But The Island shares a weakness of some of the aforementioned courses: it’s too difficult, especially given the land and prevailing conditions. As with Greywalls and Arcadia Bluffs, the design tries too hard to compete with the challenging terrain, with several crowned greens—which, as I mentioned above for The Loop, really don’t work when you have links conditions. Obviously the wind blows a lot here and while many holes have sufficient width, some don’t—most comically the par 4 14th, where the fairway is about 60 feet wide between dunes and marsh. The grass in the dunes was also some of the thickest I’ve seen, often rendering shots into the dunes lost or unplayable.

There’s a lot to like here but again, trying too hard keeps this course from being as good as it could be.

No. 35: Forest Dunes (Michigan, USA)

Forest Dunes has gone from being relatively unknown (but loved among those who knew it) 20 years ago to being a nationwide destination. The addition of The Loop increased its national renown, but it’s the Tom Weiskopf-designed original course that’s still the favorite of most. It’s not hard to see why. While the course is relatively flat, the variety and flow of the holes appeals to almost everyone, with seamless movement among different forest landscapes then out into more open, sandy expanses. Forest Dunes is one of the most pleasant and easiest walks in the state, although unfortunately few people walk it. I also think that it has five of the best holes in the state: the par 5’s 5 and 15, the relatively short par 4’s 6 and 13, and the drivable par 4 17th.

While there are a few other very good holes in the mix, there are several tame ones. And there is one poor hole—the split fairway par 4 10th. Then there’s an issue with the trees. Several holes are a bit too tight and have trees in awkward spots. Other holes, most notably the 13th (and also the parking lot/clubhouse area) have lost beautiful trees over the years that played an important role in the design.

But Forest Dunes is probably the most likable public course in my home state. It’s very playable and very pretty. A few of the architecture aficionados might not be as impressed, but I think their views might be tainted a bit by the fact that this course was designed by Tom Weiskopf rather than Hanse or Coore and Crenshaw. The routing and several of the holes are excellent. And it doesn’t ever go over-the-top, which detracts significantly from some of Michigan’s other top public courses, like Greywalls or the original Arcadia Bluffs. Forest Dunes is a very sound course, and that’s worth a lot to me.

No. 34: Mid Pines (North Carolina, USA)

While there are a few courses on this list that belong in the same class for their severity, including Greywalls and The Island, Mid Pines belongs in one with Barton Hills—very pleasant courses with an excellent set of Donald Ross greens. The interior contours here aren’t quite as interesting as Barton Hills but the broader green complexes are. Like no. 2 and Pine Needles, there are some interesting run-offs at the edges of these greens.

Where I think Mid Pines succeeds most however is how the shapes of the greens and the contours of the fairways place a premium on thoughtful driving to set up better angles for your approach shots. Several greens are angled to better accept approaches from one side of the fairway over the other. Several fairways are sloped and require you to keep your ball on the high side to get the best angle. On other holes, the right shot shape off the tee will allow you to use the slope of the fairway to gain significant distance. Mid Pines is full of holes where various elements come together in a subtle way to generate a lot of interest. And several of these holes, namely nos. 4, 7, 12, 17, 18 (all par 4’s) are personal favorites.

To be sure, there are a lot of holes on Mid Pines that are solid, but nothing special. I’m not a big fan of the opening holes, with the exception of the great 4th. Still, it comes together in a way that puts it in another class with Barton Hills: just the type of course where I’d like to be a member.

No 33: Stoneham (England, UK)

Stoneham must be one of the most under-appreciated courses in England, although like the anonymity of Walton Heath’s New Course, I think I can explain it: it’s because this course is outside of the Surrey heathland belt. If it were in it, people might talk of this course the way that they talk of Walton Heath and Woking.

Stoneham is the work of Willie Park Jr., who built many English courses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries then headed to the US where he built several more (including, I believe, the first version of Meadowbrook). His routing over this broad, hilly property is excellent, with the front nine working counterclockwise around the perimeter and the back nine consisting of back-and-forth holes in the interior.

While the front nine has its highlights, especially the long par 4 4th with its heaving fairway and the long par 3 7th with its lay-of-the land green, most of the best holes are on the back. For me, the best part of the course was the stretch of 12-16, featuring two of the most beautiful and best par 5’s that I’ve seen (12, 14) and a great drivable par 4 with a super skinny green (13). I also loved the short par 3 15th with a trench bunker curving around the front and right of its green. But in one of their many questionable renovations of Great Britain and Ireland’s best courses, Mackenzie and Ebert replaced this with some smaller, more modern looking bunkers after my visit. Pictures on the club’s website show other changes to the bunkering that look much better (they appear to have significantly improved the lame par 3 2nd), but I wonder if I would find Stoneham as charming now as I did in 2018.

While the top US clubs have all been restoring their courses to their original looks in recent years, for some reason, many UK and Ireland clubs have been ‘modernizing’ theirs. Not all of these changes are bad, but many are quite questionable. This issue will come up again later on this list, and more significantly.

No. 32: Pennard (Wales, UK)

Ok, now for something a bit different: Pennard is a common land course in southern Wales, meaning that sheep and cattle are free to—and do—graze the course. But a funny thing about Pennard is that the landscape and course reminded me a bit of Arcadia Bluffs—a vast expanse of dunesland (although in this case, not artificial), tilted toward the sea. Pennard also has a few wild greens and some holes with significant elevation changes.

I prefer Pennard for a few reasons. One, it’s obviously much more natural and the course fits (mostly) well into this landscape. And it (almost) never goes over-the-top in its design features the way that Arcadia Bluffs does. Doak’s Confidential Guide gives an impression that Pennard is a wild and quirky place, but I didn’t find that to a great degree. There are a few blind shots, but they’re not excessive. For the most part, the holes are very sound. And the course was in very good condition, with well-maintained fairways and fast greens.

I don’t think that Pennard has too many great holes, the big exception being the short par 4 7th with a wild green near the ruined Pennard Castle. But almost every hole is somewhere between good and very good because the hilly linksland is just so well-suited for golf. There is one truly awful hole near the end—the par 5 17th which is blind and has an artificially tiered fairway completely surrounded by gorse. It’s definitely in the running for worst hole of all the courses on this list.

Still, that isn’t nearly enough to spoil things and Pennard was one of my personal favorites of all the courses that I played in the British Isles.

No 31: Pilgrim’s Run (Michigan, USA)

Every list is going to have something on it that runs against consensus and on mine, it’s choosing Pilgrim’s Run as Michigan’s top public course. Not only have I never seen it as no. 1, more often than not, it doesn’t make the top 10.

Obviously, I think that the consensus is completely wrong. And for a long list of reasons. One, Pilgrim’s Run has the best set of green contours of any Michigan public course. They’re interesting and varied, without ever being over-the-top (the flattish, rumpled 3rd and 12th are especially outstanding). Two, it’s one of the best courses from an aesthetic point of view, wandering around a lovely mature forest with beautiful bunkering and shaping that blends in well with its surroundings. Three, the average hole here is probably stronger than any other Michigan public course, with no poor holes and several outstanding ones. I particularly like the par 5’s, each of which is among the best in the state, and some of the par 4’s on the back nine, especially the 16th, which might be the most beautiful pond hole on a state that’s full of them. The drivable 18th around (or over) another pond is a favorite finisher.

Detractors will point to weaknesses in routing and the fact that the course has a very unusual design history, with the owner giving 6 friends an opportunity to design 3 holes apiece. But the routing only has one weakness, a long walk between the 8th and 9th holes. And while the latter sounds like a recipe for disaster, it didn’t become one because Mike DeVries was tasked with bringing it all together, which he did brilliantly. Pilgrim’s Run doesn’t suffer from occasionally going over-the-top the way that DeVries’ other top Michigan courses The Kingsley Club and Greywalls do. Like Forest Dunes, it’s a very sound course.

Pilgrim’s Run is a course of many strengths and few weaknesses. I’ve played it several times over the last 20+ years and have loved it every time, whether I played well or not. While it has only been 6 or 7 years since I played it, maybe if I played it again, I’d rethink my position, as I have with Arcadia Bluffs. But for now, I think I’ll admit to myself that I think Pilgrim’s Run the best public course in Michigan.

Although I’ve been writing course reviews here for almost 5 years, I’ve never written a piece that sums up my thoughts across courses. To be sure, I’ve included bits of these thoughts in many of my reviews. And if anything, these general thoughts and comparisons have probably become a more important part of my reviews over time.

But I’ve reviewed almost 100 courses (97 to be exact) which, assuming an average of somewhere just under 3,000 words per review, means that I’ve probably written around 275,000 words. One of my favorite novels, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, only has 206,000 words. So I’ve done a lot of writing about golf courses. And it’s probably time to say something about these courses in summation.

So I started trying to rank the courses I’ve reviewed. This is something I’ve done in bits and pieces in the past, but I’ve never sat down and tried to hammer out a list until now. It’s a tough thing to do. It’s tough enough for me to come up with a list of Michigan’s top 5 public courses. And although I’ve obviously thought about all of these courses intensely, I haven’t seen or thought about many of them in a long time. I also haven’t thought about many of them in relation to each other. How does Blackwolf Run’s River Course compare to Woking, for example? I don’t know—I’d never thought about it.

​But now I have. I went through all of the courses that I’ve reviewed and come up with my top 40 plus 6 honorable mentions. These are all of the courses that I’ve reviewed that I would give a borderline 6/7 or higher on the Tom Doak Scale. Honestly, I started with the intention of doing a top 10 list. But then I found that there were about 13 courses that should be in the top 10. So I expanded it to 20 plus 5 honorable mentions. But then I figured, why not just make that a top 25? Then I had a bunch of near-misses for that top 25 and that list ended up having 15 courses. And that was pretty close to all of the courses that I thought were a 7 or better, but there were 5 or 6 more that I would either give a 7 or where it would be very close between a 6 and a 7. So I decided to write a bit about those as well.

​
Before we get to the honorable mentions and the top 40, here are some of the other contenders that just missed the honorable mentions. I would give each of these a strong 6 on the Doak Scale:

It was very difficult to decide which courses would just miss and make the 40 course cutoff and I’ve done a few iterations of this list where some of the following courses made it. One course which didn’t make the original list—because I hadn’t played it yet when I made it—is the Cascades Course at the Homestead Resort in western Virginia. When I first started looking at golf course ranking lists in the late 90s, this course was always considered the finest American example of mountain golf, one of America’s top 5 public courses, and one of its top 100 courses overall.

With so many high profile, flashy public courses opening in the last 25 years, the spotlight has shifted away from William Flynn's much more modest-appearing Cascades and it has fallen significantly in the rankings. I think that this drop is justified because while there are several fine holes—including the long par 4s nos. 2, 9, 13, the par 3 8th, and the par 5s nos. 12 and 16—a good half of the holes here are relatively undistinguished. But looking at the recent top public course lists, the course hasn’t fallen as far as I thought, placing in the 30s or 40s on the Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, and Golfweek top 100 public course lists. And I think that the current consensus is about right. Still, while the Homestead may longer be on lists of top American golf destinations, the Cascades is an excellent course and worth a detour into the mountains of western Virginia to see something a bit different from the recent attention-grabbing courses.

For me, one of the hardest lists to make is a list of Michigan’s 5 best public courses. For me, the contenders are Arcadia Bluffs (Bluffs), Forest Dunes, Greywalls, Pilgrim’s Run, and The Loop. Many would include Arcadia Bluffs (South) and some might include American Dunes. Over several playings between 2004 and a few years back, my thinking was always that the original Bluffs Course at Arcadia Bluffs was the best public course in Michigan, but just by a fraction over Forest Dunes, Greywalls, and Pilgrim’s Run. Others have always criticized it as being unwalkable and having too severe a set of greens. I always defended the greens as being interesting and challenging and the walkability as no worse than Greywalls.

But I played Arcadia Bluffs again in the summer of 2024 and this time, it finally struck me that there’s more to the criticisms than I had realized in 4 or 5 previous visits. Too many of the holes are overdone given the severity of the property and the ever-presence of the wind. A few of the greens (5, 6, 18) are blatantly over-contoured and a few of the green complexes are too severe at their edges (10, 14). I still think that some of the par 5’s (3, 11), long par 4’s (7, 16), and the opening 5 holes in general are among the best in the state. But I’ve become more sensitive to courses being over-the-top in difficulty in recent years and Arcadia Bluffs is one of my home state’s biggest offenders. Still, it’s hard not to include on my list a course that I thought for so long was Michigan’s best public course.

Another Michigan course that falls in the middle of this tough-to-rank group is Meadowbrook, a private club in the western suburbs of Detroit. While the course has been here since before WWII (it hosted a PGA in the 50’s), it was completely redesigned a few years back in the MacDonald/Raynor style, with steep-faced, flat-bottomed bunkers and a Biarritz green, among other features. While there is some outstanding greens contouring and several fine holes (especially the par 5 4th, par 4 7th, and par 3 11th), some of the green complexes are overdone and I feel that the angular style of the shaping conflicts with the broadly rolling landscape. Still, it’s a course that’s very much worth playing if you’re in the Detroit area and get a chance.

​And across the pond—or in the middle of it in the case of the latter—are the English Cotswolds’ Cleeve Hill and Iceland’s Keilir. Cleeve Hill is one of the most epic courses that I’ve ever seen, playing across the treeless highest points of western England. The course is on common ground and a bit rough, with sheep (and their outputs) aplenty. But Cleeve Hill is a breathtaking course and features some of the my favorite holes, including the blind dogleg 7th and the par 5 13th, with its green in an ancient earthwork. The topography is notable at Keilir too; the front nine plays through an old lava field and the back nine is on a precipice of coastline, with several holes—including the great 11th, 14th, and 16th—providing a solid Icelandic response to Pebble Beach. The long par 4 finisher was one of my favorites anywhere. Since my visit, the back nine has been reworked to increase the ocean frontage of the holes. Looking at the new routing plan, Keilir is likely now an even better course than what I saw.

Probably no modern golf architect has made a greater per-course impact on the game of golf than Mike Strantz. He left fewer than 10 original courses, yet some of these—especially Tobacco Road in the North Carolina sand hills—have drawn an incredible amount of interest and have been the subject of as much discussion as almost any course built in modern times.

And this is undoubtedly because of the style of most of Strantz’s courses—they’re incredibly bold, both visually and in terms of design features. He moved incredible amounts of dirt in an attempt to recreate some of the visuals of Irish dunescapes in the inland mid-Atlantic. While many architects in the 90s moved a lot of dirt at the sides of holes, leaving the fairways and greens relatively flat, Strantz was not afraid to build 25 foot hills in the middle of a fairway or as the site for a green. This has made several of his holes—and several of his courses—incredibly controversial. Many praise the vision and artistry of this shaping while others criticize it for being too much and making his courses far too hard for most of the people who play them.

While not as famous as Tobacco Road, all of this discussion applies equally well to Royal New Kent, Golf Digest’s Best New Public Course in 1997, the second consecutive year that a Strantz course won that award (Stonehouse, just down the road, won it in 1996). Here Strantz jazzed up a rolling, but not hilly piece of mixed countryside/forest, creating numerous blind shots, deep bunkers, and skinny hilltop greens. I think it gets a bit less attention than Tobacco Road because it isn’t in as golf-rich an area as Pinehurst and doesn’t have the sandy soil that make so many of Tobacco Road’s features so memorable. But it’s a very similar course to Tobacco Road, with several weird and severe holes. I don’t think it has as many great holes as Tobacco Road and the routing is even clunkier (this is an under-appreciated problem with several Strantz courses), but it also doesn’t have the truly awful holes that make me always play devil’s advocate with the Tobacco Road defenders.

Royal New Kent and its neighbor Stonehouse had fallen on hard times in the last decade. I think both had been closed for an extensive period of time. I didn’t get to Stonehouse so I can’t comment on the state of things there, but it appears that the current ownership has made a significant investment into Royal New Kent. The course was in excellent condition, with the fairways and greens having been regressed in recent years and the bunkers filled with nice, white sand. I didn’t have a hard time getting a tee time here on a Sunday morning a few days in advance—as opposed to Golden Horseshoe, which was almost completely booked—but when I arrived, I was pleased to see that the course was fairly full.

While I’ll have my criticisms of Royal New Kent, overall I liked it a lot. It’s definitely a course that deserves to exist, especially given how few examples of Strantz architecture there are. I’m glad to see that it’s being kept true to his intentions, which must be no small (or inexpensive) feat.


The first hole, a relatively short par 4, is classic Mike Strantz…for better and worse. On one hand, I think the hole looks really good. It reminds me a bit of the opening hole at Tobacco Road, with the fairway winding between large hills. But this hole looks a bit more natural.

On the other hand, it’s quite tricky, although maybe not unnecessarily so. If you drive it up the fairway to the right, you’ll be fine. You’ll also be fine if you go over the edge of the ‘dune’ on the left side of the fairway, which requires a carry of about 230. But if you go left of this, you can carry the dune and still end up in the junk—it’s probably 20 yards from the top of the dune to the fairway on the other side. I took this line out of concern that I could run through the fairway if I went further right. But that isn’t an issue; the fairway is about 70 yards deep over the right edge of the dune!

The approach is rough too, especially if you’ve laid well back. While—again—there’s much more room up there than appears (the green is 40 yards deep), any miss short will come about 20 yards back off the front of the green. And misses to the sides are clearly no good either. So it’s not a bad hole, but it’s too much for a first hole.

The par 5 second hole is also a lot. It’s very similar to the great eleventh at Tobacco Road, although I don’t think this hole works as well. Both hook right around a large chasm and to give yourself a chance at the green in two, you want to hug the right side. The problem main problem with this hole is that it’s very hard to tell where the junk on the right side is…and where it is is not static. The further you go, the more it cuts to the left. So it’s very hard to figure out how to drive the ball here. Best thing is to just accept this as a three-shot hole and play well out to the left.

There is one thing about this hole that I prefer to Tobacco Road’s eleventh—there’s actually some room to lay up. If you happened to drive it to a place where you could consider going for the green in two (again, not sure where that would be), it’d be a pretty interesting decision because there’s plenty of room to play safe left, but the hole narrows a lot as you get closer to the green.

Except for Caledonia, all of the Strantz courses that I’ve played (Caledonia, Royal New Kent, True Blue, Tobacco Road) have significant issues with routing. Royal New Kent has the worst routing of the four easily. One thing I hate is when the cart ride (no one should walk this course) to the next hole is longer than the next hole. In this case, the cart ride is about three times the length of the hole, a par 3 of maybe 175 yards.

And the hole itself is interesting, but just way too much—an hourglass-shaped green that’s probably 50 yards deep perched over ~20 deep hollows on both sides and blind in front. Again, there’s a lot more room at the front of the green here than it seems. If the flag is in the back, I hope you’re really good with your longer irons. But it also may be possible to use the slope at the back-right of the green to putt from the front-right to the back-left.

The wildness continues with the blind drive on the 380 yard (from the 6,700 yard tees) fourth. I also thought that this was a very good looking hole. Despite appearances, it’s the tamest one so far, with tons of room out to the left off the tee. It becomes tighter on the approach, but not unreasonably so. Because the hole turns gently right, it’s best to play up the right side (close to the bunkers) to shorten the approach.

Not even the least bit tame is the long par 5 fifth, which is one of the toughest par 5s that I’ve played. Most of the real difficulty is on the drive; you need to carry about 225 to clear the bunkers on the right but any further than about 275 and you run into bunkers through the fairway.

Even if you’ve driven it in line with the bunkers, that approach is almost completely blind. I’d strongly recommend walking or driving past the bunkers to see what’s on the other side. The fairway is wide open. But the blindness makes it difficult to choose the aggressive shot that you’ll need to get within decent range of the green for your third.

I guess in a way it’s an interesting test. You have to be precise with your drive and then either have the courage to hit a long second into uncertainty or lay back and face a long third. This is probably one of those times where while I don’t like the hole, I don’t think I can bring myself to say that it’s a bad one.

After another cart ride that’s almost as long as the next hole, we come to a mid-length par 4. This is another tough driving hole, with bunkers narrowing the fairway starting at 250 on the left. It’s probably prudent to lay a bit back here. But the green is one of the wildest on the course, with a tier about 7 feet high separating the smaller, lower front section from the larger back.

Seven is a tough, long par 3. As is clearly a theme with the course, there’s more room out there than appears. But maybe not that much; it’s probably not a good idea to aim much left of the peak of the mound behind the green.

Eight is another shortish par 4 with a puzzling drive. On this hole more than others, just keep it simple: hit left of the bunkers. As long as you’re not too far left, there’s plenty of room. And you’ll want to get some distance because you’re almost guaranteed to have a blind approach. It another very good looking hole but again, awfully tough.

I think that the par 4 ninth might be the easiest hole on the front nine, which gives you an indication of how difficult it is (hey, the course didn’t get a slope rating of 149 from 6,700 yards for nothing). Our tees were up, so it was just an iron to stay short of the bunkers on the left. From the card yardage tees (about 380), aim your drive at the left edge of the bunkers. There’s no reason to mess with the junk on the right here.

Ten is a much easier par 5 than the previous two. It’s listed at 578 on the card but plays substantially shorter because (1) the fairway slopes forward and it’s easy to hit a very long drive and (2) the card yardage measures the length of the fairway. If you go at the green on your second, it’s probably 75 yards shorter because the fairway winds to the right around a wetland.

This is one of the widest fairways on the course, so swing away. I got to within easy range of the green—I only had a six-iron. But this must be one of the toughest greens to hit from any kind of distance as it’s narrow from this line (but very deep from the layup zone) and you’re hemmed in by trees on the left. Plus, the green is bisected by about a six foot high tier. It requires an outstanding shot to hit and hold if you’re going for it in two. But because it improves the angle and allows you to play into the slope of the green, the approach is much easier from the layup zone.

It’s a wild hole and probably not something that I would create, but like the fifth--there’s a logic to it that works even if it might not be a personal favorite.

I’m not sure that there’s such a working logic to the ~380 yard eleventh. This hole is simply too hard for most golfers. The fairway narrows past the bunkers on the right and this was one of the few holes where I laid up off the tee.

But the issue is with the approach, which plays about 30 feet uphill to a green fronted by a 10+ foot deep bunker. I guess you can play safe out to the left and that’s probably what most people should do. But the green is also not very deep and there’s a decent chance that if you try to hit it, you’ll take an X on the hole. I’m not a big fan of holes where there’s a very fine line between a birdie and an X and this is certainly one (I happened to come out of the good side of the line this time!).

I mentioned on the front nine that one of my routing pet peeves is when the drive to get to the next hole is longer than the next hole. Well another of my pet peeves is when there’s a tee right next to the green that you just finished but that’s the tee for the hole after the next one and the actual next hole is a par 3 that’s been shoehorned in off to the side. Twelve at Royal New Kent is maybe the most egregious example of this because you have to drive about 100 yards the wrong direction to get to the tee, then you play 175 yards even further in the wrong direction, then drive back to the eleventh green to play the thirteenth hole. This is one of the worst routing clunks that I’ve ever seen on a golf course.

Too bad…the par 3 is a not a bad hole in its own right. I tend not to be a big fan of these long par 3 Strantz greens, but I might this one less because there’s good visibility to all sections of the green and you can see the slopes that you can play to get to the different sections. Plus, the hole is good-looking.

Thirteen is a short par 4 with a simple and very good concept. While there’s a lot of room out to the left, we can see the green from the tee and tell that it’s not too wide and slopes off left and right. This means that we’ll have a better shot at it if we place our drives up the right side of the fairway. The primary challenge with that is that it’s probably 270 to get past the bunkers.

Now we have a 300 yard drive through a neighborhood and across a road to get to the next section of three holes. If building this course had been about building a golf course rather than building houses, they could have just put the par 3 in this relatively flat space. They probably could have still figured out a way to put houses around it. But then I guess they wouldn’t have had a golf hole to put houses around where the twelfth hole is. In any case, I’m sure that a lot of the stupidity of the routing wasn’t Strantz’s fault.

After this stupid journey, we come another short, but much more awkward par 4. It really best to treat this hole as two par 3s, where the green of the first par 3 is just short of the two bunkers at the right edge of the gap. A shot of about 200 yards here will leave you about as clear a view of the green as you can get.

It’s possible for long hitters to go for the green, but it’s about a 270 yard carry over junk and it isn’t particularly wide on the other side. If you place your first shot well, it’s only about 100 yards to a very receptive green.

While I like the hole for how it plays, like many others on the course, I like it more as a piece of landscape architecture. I think it looks fantastic from the tee--the shaping is so thorough across the entire view and blends seamlessly into the woods left and...well I'm not even sure where it ends on the right.

The par 3 fifteenth is also a very good looking hole. This is another hole that penalizes you pretty severely if you don’t reach the front of the green (also if you miss to the right). But the green is large—probably 130 X 120 feet. So if you’re playing from the correct set of tees, don’t have much of an excuse for not hitting it.

Sixteen is a tough, 450 yard dogleg left. There’s plenty of room to play out to the right but to shorten the approach, it’s probably best to keep it up the left. You don’t want to cut it too close however because your second can be blocked by trees.

The approach is one of the more conventional-looking on the course and in general, I’d say this is one of the more conventional holes. But it’s a good challenge and a good hole.

After another 350 yard drive back under the road, we come to a 535 yard par 5 that’s stylistically quite different from the rest of the course. This hole, rather than having its own manufactured landscape like the other holes, fits into the gentle, forested surroundings. It’s still a tough hole, with a creek running down the entire right side and crossing in front of the shallow green. Other than the obvious—don’t go in the creek—be careful if laying up about running through the fairway into the woods on the left.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that the eighteenth is the dumbest hole on the course. I didn’t get a photo of the drive, but the fairway is almost endlessly wide. Drive it any further than about 260 however and it runs out. The approach is over a pond to a wide but shallow peninsula.

Apparently there used to be a waterfall behind this green. That would have appropriately highlighted the silliness of the hole. If it’s too expensive to maintain a waterfall, I’d suggest a windmill as perhaps a lower maintenance alternative.

Like the other Strantz courses that I’ve played (except Caledonia), Royal New Kent is a mixed bag. There are a lot of big positives, but also some pretty big negatives. I think the biggest positive is this course as a work of landscape architecture. Most of the holes, regardless of how they play, look great. The shaping is as thorough as any I’ve seen so that each hole looks like its own cohesive world. And when you can see the surroundings, the margins of the holes blend in well to their surroundings—the wildness tends to taper out at the edges and while the middles of the holes are clearly manufactured, it’s often difficult to tell where at the sides the manufacturing ends. Often, you can’t tell within the margins of the hole if something is completely manufactured or based on a pre-existing landform. Thinking about it now, this aspect of Strantz’s work reminds me a lot of Fazio’s…which shouldn’t be surprising because Strantz worked for Fazio for many years.

I read a quote, I think by Bill Coore, calling Fazio the best landscape architect in golf. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but it really isn’t if you think about it. It can’t be easy to build holes that are so thoroughly shaped yet blend in well with their surroundings. Looking through my pictures of Royal New Kent, I’m realizing just how well this course does this. And it’s a much harder thing to do in the tough ground here than somewhere like Tobacco Road, where it’s all sand.

The other positive is that I think most of these holes work in their own right. Many, like the par 3 third or the par 5 fifth, are complicated and it isn’t clear what you’re supposed to do or where you can miss. But most holes—even ones that I like less like the par 4 eleventh—create an avenue to play safe. And many of these holes, in addition to being beautiful works of landscape architecture, are exciting to play and require a good amount of thought. So I think hole-for-hole, the course is very good.

But there are negatives. The most obvious one, which I’ve said enough about already, is the routing. It’s at least minus-half-a-point for that; the worst Strantz routing that I’ve seen. The other thing is that while I think hole-for-hole the course is good, they add up to being a bit too much. Yes, there’s a way to play each hole. But on so many of them, playing safe isn’t the easiest thing to do. Often, it’s not obvious how to play safe. And there are just a few too many holes like this. I think the course would be better if it turned down the complexity and difficulty a bit more often. Repeated plays would definitely help figure it out and might make me more forgiving on this point. But the astronomical slope rating is an indication that it’s probably a bit overdone.

Where does this course rank among the four Strantz courses that I’ve played? It’s definitely behind Caledonia, which packs so much interest into such a small piece of property and doesn’t display any of Strantz’s weakness for excess. I’d also have it behind Tobacco Road which, despite having a few awful holes, has a handful of both the best and most original holes that I’ve played. But I think that Royal New Kent is a slightly better course than True Blue because hole-for-hole, there’s more creativity in the design of the holes. Also, I'll take Royal New Kent's one bad finishing hole over True Blue's three overdone finishing holes.

So Royal New Kent is definitely worth a play if you’re going through or aren’t too far from southeastern Virginia. It’s a perfect complement to Golden Horseshoe. These courses, which I’d actually rate pretty similarly to each other, could hardly be more different and I always like when a golf destination has good courses that are very different from each other. Apart from golf, the big draw in the area of course is colonial Williamsburg, which I also liked. Yes, it’s more for children and old people. But it’s a pleasant place to take a walk and I enjoyed having dinner in the old tavern. George Washington’s favorite cocktail—the Cherry Bounce, a mix of cherries, brandy, and spices—was also a favorite of mine.